Justine Augier. “Managers may be guilty of some crimes, but it’s often the company that benefits from those crimes.”

Heroine Madame Figaro 2023 Grand Prix laureate Believe in the power of literatureJustin Augier delivers an equally admirable essay Legal entityon September 4 (1) in bookstores dedicated to cement manufacturer Lafarge, which continued to operate its factory in Jalabiya, Syria until September 2014. Disregarding the safety of his Syrian employees and unhesitatingly doing business with the Islamic State, which is funded to the tune of several million dollars… The author follows the unscrupulous actions of the leaders who refused to give up their precious investments; the horror and bitterness of the employees who had to flee while the emigrants were evacuated; but also the incredible undertaking of young, determined female lawyers, lawyers, interns, even if it means challenging prestigious firms with enormous resources and confronting the “legal personality” that constitutes Lafarge with its responsibilities. Interview:

Madame Figaro. – How did you get interested in the Lafarge case?
Justin Augier. – It immediately caught my attention, because I try to show in my work that the Syrian story concerns us all, which is clearly seen here. I was waiting to find a corner that would allow me not to despair completely. This became apparent to me when I met the women lawyers who filed complaints against Lafarge. An entirely different imagination could develop alongside the imagination of the work itself. In writing, I look for ways to combat the fatalism that permeates an age when politics gives the impression that it can no longer change things, when we feel both stunned and powerless in the face of what is happening. The work that these women do seemed to me to open up opportunities.

What exactly does it consist of?
They work for the Sherpa and ECHR associations, which fight against crimes committed especially by large economic players. When they discover what will become the Lafarge Affair article worldIn the summer of 2016, they immediately understood that it was a business for them. One of the main challenges of their task is to demonstrate the responsibility of multinational organizations in the actions of their subsidiaries. Indeed, these large groups are mainly trying to organize their impunity, and sometimes it is difficult to show that what their subsidiaries have done on the other side of the world applies to their headquarters. In this case, this demonstration seemed simpler. And when they discovered in 2016, after the attacks, that Lafarge had been funding armed groups, including the Islamic State, for two years, they knew the case would take on some dimension. They filed a complaint alongside Lafarge’s Syrian workers for financing terrorist companies, complicity in crimes against humanity and endangering the lives of others, because although the migrants quickly sought refuge when war broke out around the factory, managers demanded that Syrian workers continue to come to work, which exposed them to great daily dangers.

This is the first time the company has been prosecuted for complicity in crimes against humanity…
Yes, and it was a victory, because this concept of complicity was not clear until the case. Lafarge’s lawyers explained that to be complicit in such a crime, one must accept his ideology. But lawyers went back through the case law, until the Nuremberg trials or more recently the Papon case, and these rulings held that to prove complicity it was enough to show that the accused knew that the structure they were helping him do it. type of crime, and that by apparently funding him, they will help commit them. Therefore, the Court of Cassation accepted that complicity was broadly understood. The work of these lawyers consists in advancing the law, approaching justice.

Which is not always the case…
The law is an ambiguous instrument. It is created by the government, while being able to become a tool of anti-government. Sherpa lawyers try to manipulate this side of things, to find loopholes so that the law approaches justice. When they take on the Lafarge case, it is to advance case law, to allow people like the Syrian employees access to justice, but also to change mindsets. A few years ago, it was considered that a multinational organization like Lafarge was a French industrial flagship that should not be touched. Today, we tend to want these actors to become litigants like everyone else. These groups create their own rules, set their own “principles” and “obligations” to which they must respond. They are the only actors who evaded the law in this way.

There’s this Erin Brockovich battle of small vs. big and women vs. men, in addition to Erin Brockovich improvising as a champion of the cause and acting alone.

That’s why your book is titled. Legal entity ? What exactly is a legal entity?
Managers may be guilty of certain crimes, but very often it is the company that benefits from those crimes. And if they did, it’s probably because the company allowed them to do so, maybe even encouraged them to do so. The concept of “juristic person” divides the legal world, with some criticizing what they call “legal fiction”, emphasizing that one cannot “dinner with a legal person” nor sit in court. But this fiction allows us to approach the complex reality of a system made up of multiple actors, stakeholders, interests and dynamics that are also important to confront. Just because managers are fired or punished after such a case, as it was, doesn’t mean the company won’t do it again. In fact, we should hold the legal entity responsible.

Doesn’t this romance feel like Erin Brockovich with these young women going up against these big, pretty male-dominated law firms, and the directors of Lafarge, who are also men?
There’s this Erin Brockovich battle of small vs. big and women vs. men, in addition to Erin Brockovich improvising as a champion of the cause and acting alone. What is so beautiful about these women’s work is their sense of collectiveness. The struggle is long and they pass the baton to each other within the developing groups. They work in a humble way, in search of clarity, which I wanted to tell, because these women made possible what was a priori impossible, such was the imbalance of power. In this juxtaposition of the two worlds, I was also struck by the relationship to the words of each. On the one hand, lawyers are convinced that words can change things and take their fight through mature choice of language, writing, every term used. On the other hand, there is the language of Lafarge’s managers, this corporate language that contaminates other fields, including politics, a profit-driven language haunted by clichés; the storm’ as they negotiate with ISIS through intermediaries, ‘a cake to share’ – and completely misguided. The words “value”, “responsibility”, “principle” or “ethics” are thus emptied of their meaning. And I guess it was the use of this language in particular that prevented them from understanding what was going on around them, causing them to maintain their “business as usual” while people were dying all around them.

All of this is epitomized by the famous “It was a Syrian affair” uttered by a Lafarge director when questioned by a police officer who explained that they had done business with the Islamic State before the Bataclan attacks on French soil. . …
This phrase haunted me long before I wrote this book. It shows such a narrow vision of responsibility and shows how these men are filled with contempt for some lives that they consider important and less valuable… Lafarge funded these terrorist groups until the end of 2014; the genocide of the Yezidis. the place and the massacres were many, sometimes they took place several tens of kilometers away from their factory. It is a view of the world that opposes the jurists who want to focus on the suffering of Syrians, the reality of the crimes committed, the destruction and the horror. . I wanted to emphasize their vision and not use the references that we often use in this kind of business, this whole imagination of troubled businesses and gray areas inhabited by shadowy individuals that make us consider what happens as a series of games and intrigues . , which puts reality at a distance. In their quest for justice, these women choose to be as close to reality and truth as possible.

(1) Legal entityJustine Augier, ed. Actes Sud, 286 p., €22.