Zoom in In December 2017, six former CEOs and directors of Lafarge and Lafarge Cement Syria were indicted on charges of financing terrorism and deliberate endangerment of people’s lives, and some on the additional charge of breaching the EU embargo on Syrian oil – namely: Eric Olsen and Bruno Lafont, former CEOs of Lafarge; Bruno Pescheux, CEO of the Lafarge Syrian subsidiary between 2008 and 2014; and his successor, Frédéric Jolibois; Jean-Claude Veillard, Lafarge’s director of security; and Christian Herrault, vice director at Lafarge. In March and May 2018, Lafarge’s human resources executive Sonia Artinian and former safety director at LCS, Jacob Waerness, were indicted on similar charges. France leads the way in the fight against corporate crime France amended its law in 2004 (Loi n° 2004-1343 du 9 mars 2004) allowing the prosecution of companies for all crimes entailed in its Criminal Code – including for their activities abroad. The condition is that a physical representative of the company must have committed the crime (in the present case Eric Olsen and his associates) in order to prosecute the corporation as a moral person. In June 2018, Lafarge as a legal entity was charged in this case (see above). Read more about the case 27