A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality

As the judge read her verdict in Paris Criminal Court on Monday, police officers walked to the defense table to arrest Bruno Lafont, the 69-year-old former chief executive of one of the world’s largest cement manufacturers, Lafarge, and Christian Herrault, the 75-year-old former deputy head of operations. They would begin serving their prison sentences immediately: six and five years, respectively, for financing terrorism in Syria and beyond.

Their individual sentences were striking, but the big news was something else: For the first time in France, and possibly for the first time ever, anywhere, an entire corporation had been put on trial and found criminally liable for enabling terrorism. Two of the civil rights lawyers who brought the case were still beaming when I caught up with them a short while later by video at the courthouse. Claire Tixeire, of........

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