A former chief of Italian motorway operator Autostrade per l’Italia has been sentenced to 12 years behind bars over the 2018 collapse of a bridge near Genoa that claimed 43 lives.
Giovanni Castellucci was one of 32 people convicted in connection with the Morandi bridge disaster, which hurled vehicles onto warehouses and a riverbed below the flyover as a summer storm swept through the city.
Another former senior Autostrade executive, Michele Donferri Mitelli, was handed an 11-year prison term.
Twenty-five other defendants were acquitted or had their cases dismissed under the statute of limitations.
“We are satisfied with the sentences. The important thing was to identify the precise responsibilities for individual senior roles in the companies involved,” added Ms Possetti, who lost her sister, brother-in-law and her sister’s two children in the tragedy.
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A heavy silence settled over the courtroom as presiding judge Paolo Lepri spent about 45 minutes reading the verdicts before 400 relatives of victims, lawyers, journalists and members of the public.
The proceedings had come to represent not only a reckoning over the catastrophe, but also the grinding pace of justice in Italy’s most complicated criminal cases.
Judge Paolo Lepri delivers the verdict in the case of the Morandi bridge collapse
Castellucci, who was also CEO of Atlantia — Autostrade’s controlling shareholder at the time — was found guilty of complicity in multiple counts of manslaughter through negligence.
Prosecutors had sought a prison term of more than 18 years.
Castellucci did not attend the hearing because he is already imprisoned, serving a six-year sentence linked to a separate fatal incident on a southern Italian viaduct in 2013.
His lawyers said they planned to appeal, arguing that the former executive had been turned into a scapegoat.
“This is a defeat for the truth of what happened,” his lawyer Giovanni Paolo Accinni said.
“It is part of a trend that has already led to Castellucci being sent to prison. The criminalisation of the chief executive cannot be the solution. We will continue to fight for his innocence.”
Italy’s legal system allows a first-instance judgment to be appealed at least twice.
Relatives of the Morandi bridge collapse victims at the courhouse for the verdict in the case
Vehicles plunge from broken bridge
The Morandi bridge gave way on the eve of a national holiday, stunning Italy and setting off years of scrutiny over how the country’s ageing infrastructure was managed and maintained.
A section of the bridge standing 50 metres above the ground collapsed while as many as 35 vehicles were travelling across it.
The tragedy ignited a confrontation between the government of the day and Atlantia, which was controlled by the Benetton family. The dispute ultimately resulted in Atlantia selling its controlling stake in Autostrade.
Prosecutors contend that neglected maintenance, unheeded warnings and postponed safety measures helped cause the collapse. They allege that essential work was repeatedly delayed even as the motorway continued producing and distributing profits.
Defence lawyers dispute that account, maintaining that an original design flaw in the bridge’s stay cable number nine — the cable that failed — caused the disaster and that no maintenance programme could have averted the tragedy.
