Military families want DOJ to distribute nearly $800M from French cement company found guilty of bribing ISIS

In November 2017, Chief Petty Officer Kenton Stacy was injured in Raqqa, Syria, while clearing the second floor of a hospital that ISIS had booby-trapped with explosives. Now a quadriplegic, Stacy, his wife Lindsey and their four children are part of a lawsuit brought by military families against the French cement company Lafarge recently found guilty by a French court of paying millions of dollars in bribes to ISIS to keep their factory open in ISIS-controlled territory in Syria.

"I mean, they were essentially funneling money to fund terrorists and ISIS and all these heinous crimes and evil acts," Lindsey Stacy told Fox News while standing by the side of her husband, the former Navy Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) specialist, who just had another surgery to deal with injuries sustained in Syria nine years ago.

"It's very overwhelming, Kenton struggles mentally and physically with his own battles and the kids and I, we have our own struggles," she said. "It's hard to juggle, especially when our oldest son has cerebral palsy and he requires his own 24-7 care."

President Donald Trump praised Stacy's service to the nation in his 2018 State of the Union Address to Congress. Army Staff Sgt. Justin Peck bounded into a booby-trapped building to rescue Kenton and then gave him more than two hours of CPR while medics worked to save his life.

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"Kenton Stacy would have died if not for Justin’s selfless love for a fellow warrior. Tonight, Kenton is recovering in Texas. Raqqa is liberated... All of America salutes you," Trump said.

In a landmark ruling in April, a French court convicted Lafarge, the world’s largest cement manufacturer, of providing material support to a terror group and sentenced its former CEO to six years in prison. Eight former Lafarge employees were found guilty. Lafarge is appealing.

The company acknowledged the court’s finding describing the issue as a "legacy matter," which was "in flagrant violation of Lafarge’s Code of Conduct."

Nearly 1,000 plaintiffs, most of them military families, are part of earlier litigation in the Eastern District of New York.

"They were killed, in Syria, by a gruesome terrorist organization that was funded in part by Lafarge. And that's not an allegation. That is undisputed fact. Lafarge [pleaded] guilty to doing that in 2022," said Todd Toral, the lawyer from Jenner & Block representing Stacy and about 25 other families.

Toral, who is also a U.S. Marine, is seeking compensation for those families from the $777 million Lafarge paid to the Justice Department as part of the settlement. The Justice Department has had that money since October 2022.

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"I think the ruling by the court in France is significant generally, because it's the first time in many, many years that a corporation, and not just the corporation, but executives at a corporation have been held to account for their misconduct in aiding terrorism," Toral said in an interview with Fox News.

In order to operate in ISIS-controlled areas of Syria, Lafarge paid more than $6.5 million to ISIS from 2013–2014 through its Syrian subsidiary to keep production facilities running. The cement produced at its factory in Jalabiya, a factory which was bought for $680 million months before the Syrian uprising began in 2011, was also used for tunnels and bunkers, which helped the terrorist group.

The lawsuit is significant because it marks the first time a company has faced U.S. charges for supporting a terrorist group.

In October 2022, Lafarge settled with the U.S. Justice Department before the French ruling, paying more than $777 million into an asset forfeiture fund currently controlled by the DOJ, funds which are supposed to compensate victims of the ISIS attacks, many of them American Gold Star families like Hailey Dayton, whose father was the first American killed by ISIS in Syria on Thanksgiving Day 2016.

"I was 15 when my dad was killed," Hailey Dayton told Fox News from her home in Florida. "I saw six guys in Navy white step out of the van. I got so excited because I thought my Dad came back to surprise us. I remember opening the door, huge smile on my face, and I was looking at the men, trying to find my dad and I didn't find, I didn't see him, but instead I saw six guys with tears in their eyes."

The Biden Justice Department denied requests to distribute the Lafarge funds while the case was still pending before a French court. Lafarge was found guilty by that court in April. In February, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., pressed then-Attorney General Pam Bondi on when the DOJ planned to release the funds to the families.

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"In February 2025, my colleagues and I sent you a letter urging the department to review the petitions for remission submitted by the families of those fallen service members, including several of my constituents. The previous administration ignored these victims and our requests and left their petitions unresolved," Biggs said to Bondi during a congressional hearing.

"Congressman, we are aware of that and we're committed to doing everything we can to support the victims and work with you. Thank you for that question," Bondi replied. That was more than a year ago and still DOJ has not distributed the compensation funds.

Now the plaintiffs, most of them military families, say the decision to release the funds rests with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

"I don't know why. I don't know why they're ignoring us. To me, it feels like being a pawn. My dad, he went in when he was 19, he served 23 years," Dayton, the Gold Star daughter of Chief Petty Officer Scott Dayton, said. "To the current Department of Justice, I would, say, make things right."

Lindsey Stacy says she and her family have difficulty making ends meet given Kenton Stacy’s severe injuries.

"There's a lot of families out there that could benefit from these funds. I mean, it's been almost nine years. It would be nice to, you know, for justice to be served. They have been convicted recently in their own country, guilty. It has been a long battle, but it'd be nice just for it to come to an end, get some closure and be able to just take care of our family," Stacy added. "I mean he made a huge sacrifice for our country and it would just be nice if they'd stand right by us and all the other co-plaintiffs."

"We can think of no group of people who are more worthy of receiving compensation from that victim's compensation fund than these families who lost a son, lost a brother, lost a husband, and they deserve to be treated better by the United States of America," Toral, who continues to press his clients’ case, said in an interview ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

The DOJ, which controls the $777 million dollars in penalties forfeited by Lafarge, issued the following statement: 

"The Department is committed to compensating all victims to the maximum extent permitted by law.  While we cannot comment on a pending matter, the Department will always engage in the appropriate process to evaluate claims and ensure that our brave servicemembers receive any amount of compensation to which they are entitled."