An Italian court sentenced the former CEO of the country’s main highway operator to 12 years in prison Thursday over the 2018 collapse of Genoa’s Morandi bridge, closing a four-year trial into a disaster that killed 43 people and exposed severe lapses in Italy’s infrastructure maintenance.
WHAT HAPPENED
Judge Paolo Lepri read verdicts against 57 defendants in a Genoa courtroom packed with relatives of the victims, many of whom broke down in tears as the sentences were announced. Giovanni Castellucci, former chief executive of highway operator Autostrade per l’Italia, received the case’s longest sentence, 12 years, after prosecutors had sought 18. Michele Donferri Mitelli, the company’s former head of maintenance, was sentenced to 11 years, while former deputy Paolo Berti received five years and six months. In total, 30 defendants were convicted, with sentences ranging from one year and 11 months to 12 years; others were acquitted or saw charges expire under Italy’s statute of limitations. Castellucci was not present for the verdict, as he is already serving a six-year sentence for a separate fatal 2013 bus crash on another Autostrade highway that killed 40 people.
The Morandi bridge, a 51-year-old motorway flyover, collapsed during a summer rainstorm on Aug. 14, 2018, sending a 200-meter section and dozens of vehicles plunging roughly 45 meters to the ground below. Prosecutors said years of inadequate maintenance and ignored warning signs on the bridge’s stay cables, including cable number nine, which ultimately failed, allowed the structure to deteriorate to the point of collapse; prosecutor Walter Cotugno described the bridge as “a ticking time bomb.” Defense lawyers rejected that account, arguing the collapse stemmed from an original design defect in the cable rather than a maintenance failure they said no program could have prevented. Around 600 residents lost their homes as a result of the disaster.
Egle Possetti, who heads a committee representing victims’ families and lost her sister, brother-in-law and two nephews in the collapse, told reporters outside the courthouse that responsibility should extend beyond the highest-ranking defendants to Autostrade, engineering firm Spea and Italy’s Transport Ministry. Arrigo Giana, the current head of Autostrade, published an open letter Wednesday apologizing to victims’ families and the people of Genoa, writing that the company’s gesture could never erase their pain.
WHY IT MATTERS
The verdict closes one of Italy’s longest-running corporate accountability cases and represents a rare instance of executives facing lengthy prison time for a national infrastructure failure, though the sentences fell well short of the roughly 400 years prosecutors had collectively sought. Under Italy’s legal system, the ruling can still be appealed twice, meaning the case is unlikely to be fully resolved for years. The verdict also revives scrutiny of how Italy manages aging infrastructure more broadly, given prosecutors’ finding that essentially no reinforcement work was done on the bridge’s failed pillar in the 51 years between its construction and collapse.
WHAT’S NEXT
Defendants are expected to appeal the verdict, extending a legal process that has already run for nearly eight years since the collapse. Possetti’s victims’ committee has signaled it will continue pressing for the state’s own responsibility to be more clearly established as the case proceeds through Italy’s appellate courts.
Originally published on HNGN