Welcome back to bribe, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today's guest is a journalist and filmmaker based in Paris.

She has a master's degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University

and a master's degree in international relations from Sience Po in France.

She's been widely recognized for her excellent reporting,

including, I'm delighted to say, as the recipient of the 2017 Trace Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Her coverage and investigation of LaFfarge, a French cement company,

and its operations in Syria led to a lengthy article in Le Monde. The article describes Lafarge's

plant's complicated web of covert deals with the so-called Islamic State and other armed

groups. Employees were kidnapped, crisis management calls with France

became a daily occurrence, and ultimately the plant was abandoned under dangerous conditions.

Dorote Miriam Kailu, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for inviting me.

This is a very elaborate and complicated story.

It implicates a lot of different legal and compliance questions.

Why don't you start for those unfamiliar with the story by describing the situation that Lafarge found itself in when the Syrian civil war began in 2011?

Yeah, sure.

So LaFarge has had acquired in 2007 a cement plant in Jalabia, which is in

the north of Syria, 90 kilometers from Morocco, which became later the Syrian capital

of the Islamic States. And when it was acquired in 2007, it was purchased from

the Egyptian company, Orascom. And LaFarge had invested a lot of money in this plant. It was like

the largest investment, foreign investment outside of the old sector. And it was open in 2010, inaugurated in the presence of

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