As security continued to deteriorate, managers resorted to using intermediaries to contact the armed groups, saying they were concerned<br />“that direct contact would create additional risk vis-à-vis the Syrian government or other armed groups,” Lafarge said in a statement.<br />But the protests grew more violent, and by the end of<br />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.<br />On Monday, the company announced that its chief executive, Eric Olsen, would resign after an internal investigation<br />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.<br />That move followed a complaint in November by a nongovernmental organization called Sherpa, which accused the company of complicity in war crimes<br />doing business with the terrorist group Islamic State to keep its Syria plant open, despite sanctions by the United Nations on the group.<br />While fighting among Syrian rebels, the Syrian army<br />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.<br />Sherpa, the nongovernmental organization, has alleged it did so with payoffs to the Islamic State in 2013<br />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.
