Swiss-French industrial company LafargeHolcim

Two senior executives of the Swiss-French industrial company LafargeHolcim have been charged with funneling money to the Takfiri terrorist group, Daesh or known as ISIS through the company’s activities in conflict-ridden Syria, reported a judicial source.

Press TV said that the judicial source speaking anonymously, reported that the two top managers at LafargeHolcim, including its former CEO, were charged on Friday over accusations of paying the Takfiri outfit and other foreign-backed militant groups through a middleman between 2013 and 2014 in an attempt to allow the company’s factory in Jalabiyah in northern Syria to continue to operate.

The two men, identified as Bruno Lafont, chief executive from 2007 to 2015, and the group’s former Syria chief Christian Herrault, appeared in court for hearings and were imprisoned in custody over charges of “financing a terrorist organization,” and “endangering the lives of others.”

Eric Olsen, who took over from Lafont as CEO after the company merged with Switzerland’s Holcim, was charged with the same crimes a day earlier. The three officials have been in detention since Wednesday.

In addition, three other top managers at the Jalabiya factory were charged in the case last week.

The company, which produces cement, construction aggregates and concrete, was initially founded as Lafarge in France in 1833. In 2015, however, it merged with Holcim, a Swiss building supplies company, and began to be called LafargeHolcim henceforth.

The Swiss-French firm is also suspected of employing fake consulting contracts to purchase oil from Daesh in mid-2013, when the terror organization took control of most of Syria’s strategic oil reserves.

The Takfiri terrorists, who have now lost all the territory formerly under their control in Syria, had taken control of the Jalabiyah plant in September 2014.

Along with France, several European countries, particularly Britain, have been supporting the militants operating against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011. Last week, Britain suspended an aid program for the war-ravaged country to investigate reports that the money is ending up in the wrong hands.

Since March 2011, Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed terrorist groups that are nurtured by Saudi Wahhabi thought, and majorly supported by the US as well as numerous Western countries and Israel.