On October 4, 2025, on the first day of the Lafarge trial—concerning allegations of terrorist financing and violations of the embargo in Syria between 2013 and 2014— the defense team for the former director of the Lafarge Group’s Syrian subsidiary asked the court to rule that the settlement order issued by the investigating judges after nearly seven years of investigation was invalid.
While the former executive had been indicted for acts limited to a specific period, the period of preliminary investigation had been extended by two months at the stage of referral to trial and included new factual elements for which he had not been indicted, which conflicted with the case law of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation and constituted a violation of Article 385, paragraph 2, of the Code of Criminal Procedure
The Court had no choice but to find that the order of referral was irregular due to the extension of the period of prevention. By a preliminary ruling dated October 5, 2025, it referred the case back to the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office for correction, leading to the postponement of the hearing until mid-November and to the amendment of the pre-trial detention period by a corrective order dated November 6, 2025.
A useful reminder that any discrepancy between the period of prevention specified at the time of indictment and that referred to in the order of referral renders the referral to the court invalid.
The Court, however, held that the new factual elements included at the referral stage constituted a mere clarification that did not exceed the scope of the case referred to the Court, a finding that the defense intends to challenge on appeal.
