The Grenfell Tower inquiry will “empty-chair” key witnesses from the firm that supplied highly flammable cladding to the building if they refuse to give evidence later this month.
Three people who worked for the multinational Arconic claim that they are banned by French law from testifying at the public inquiry into the fire that killed 72 people in the west London tower block in June 2017.
Arconic made and supplied the rainscreen panels, filled with a polyethylene core, already identified by the inquiry as “the principal reason the flames spread so rapidly up, down and around the building”.
The company is based in Pittsburgh, in the United States, but the witnesses live in France or Germany and maintain that the 1968 French Blocking Statute prevents
