An Italian court on Thursday convicted the former chief executive of Italy’s main motorway operator and 29 others over the 2018 Genoa motorway bridge collapse that killed 43 people in a disaster that exposed serious failings in maintaining Italy’s infrastructure.Giovanni Castellucci, the former chief executive of motorway operator Autostrade per l’Italia, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, the maximum sentence in the case after a four-year trial. Michele Donferri Mitelli, former maintenance director of Autostrade, was sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Antonino Galatà , former CEO of SPEA Engineering, was sentenced to five years and six months.A total of 30 people were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 1 year 11 months to 12 years. Others were either acquitted or had lesser charges that ran out of statute of limitations.
victim verdict
Dozens of family members packed the courtroom as Chief Judge Paul Lepree read the verdict. Many were in tears.“I lost my sister, her two children, my brother-in-law, even their puppy. That’s where my determination comes from – to make sure they get justice, to make sure their death was not in vain,” said Eger Posetti, who heads the committee to preserve the memory of the bridge victims.Prosecutors argued that years of neglected maintenance led to the collapse on August 14, 2018, when a 200-meter-long section of the Morandi highway bridge collapsed during heavy rains, sending dozens of cars plunging to the ground. Photos of the collapse shocked Italy on one of its busiest days for tourism.Lawyers for the victims said the trial showed warning signs of defects in the collapsed tower had existed for decades. “This problem has been known since 1993. We have three identical towers. Two of them already had the same defect and no one seriously asked whether the third tower also had this defect,” said Raffaele Caruso, a lawyer representing the victims.The current CEO of Autostrade publicly apologized and said: “The actions and decisions of some people have left indelible scars. It is a moral responsibility for us to provide an apology today that was not made at the time.”Autostrade and its subsidiaries reached a corporate liability agreement to pay a fine of about 30 million euros ($34 million), sparing the companies from going to trial as corporate defendants.A new bridge designed by Genoa-born architect Renzo Piano opened in 2020, spanning the Memorial to the Victims.
