As security continued to deteriorate, managers resorted to using intermediaries to contact the armed groups, saying they were concerned
“that direct contact would create additional risk vis-à-vis the Syrian government or other armed groups,” Lafarge said in a statement.
But the protests grew more violent, and by the end of
that year, according to the company, employees at the plant began to face a growing security threat as local armed groups drove out the Syrian army and converged on the region.
On Monday, the company announced that its chief executive, Eric Olsen, would resign after an internal investigation
that concluded last month found the Syrian operation’s managers paid off armed groups to allow safe passage for employees and keep supplies flowing to the multimillion-euro factory.
That move followed a complaint in November by a nongovernmental organization called Sherpa, which accused the company of complicity in war crimes
doing business with the terrorist group Islamic State to keep its Syria plant open, despite sanctions by the United Nations on the group.
While fighting among Syrian rebels, the Syrian army
and the Islamic State drove other foreign companies out of the country, the plant, operated by Lafarge S. A., was curiously able to tough it out for years: From its opening in 2010 through to 2014, cement continued to pour from its mills in Jalabiyeh, a town near the Turkish border.
Sherpa, the nongovernmental organization, has alleged it did so with payoffs to the Islamic State in 2013
and 2014 to obtain safe passage for employees, and by buying oil and other materials needed to make cement from regions of Syria controlled by the terrorist group.
