In all, 32 defendants convicted and 25 acquitted or cleared by statute of limitations over 2018 Morandi bridge catastrophe.
Printed On 16 Jul 2026
A court docket has sentenced the previous CEO of Italy’s major freeway operator to 12 years in jail over the collapse of the Morandi road bridge within the port metropolis of Genoa.
Judges delivered their verdict on Thursday in Genoa within the first trial over the collapse of the bridge, which killed 43 folks when it fell aside on August 14, 2018. It’s thought of one of the country’s worst infrastructure disasters.
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Atlantia CEO Giovanni Castellucci was discovered responsible of vehicular murder and negligence associated to the Morandi bridge’s collapse.
The bridge was operated by Atlantia’s motorway unit, Autostrade per l’Italia, which has come beneath extreme scrutiny on this affair.
Castellucci is already in jail, serving a six-year sentence over one other deadly incident in 2013 on a viaduct in southern Italy, and was not in court docket to listen to the decision.
Additionally convicted on Thursday had been Autostrade’s former head of upkeep, Michele Donferri Mitelli, who was sentenced to 11 years in jail and the previous CEO of the SPEA engineering firm, Antonino Galata, who acquired 5 years and 6 months.
In all, 32 folks had been convicted and handed sentences starting from one yr and 11 months to 12 years. Others had been both discovered not responsible, or lesser expenses had expired beneath the statute of limitations.
Kin of the victims, in the meantime, packed the court docket to listen to the end result of a case that has turn out to be an emblem of Italy’s decaying infrastructure and gradual justice system. The decision got here after 4 years of trial hearings for 57 defendants, together with firm executives, engineers and transport ministry officers, on expenses of manslaughter, endangering transport security and falsifying official paperwork.
The 1,182-metre (1,293-yard) bridge, which had been dubbed Italy’s “Brooklyn Bridge”, was designed by the architect Riccardo Morandi and inaugurated in 1967.
By the flip of the century, consultants continued to warn that the construction was deteriorating, but crucial repairs had been by no means carried out.
Prosecutor Walter Cotugno dubbed the bridge “a ticking time bomb” on the verdict.
The collapse of the then-51-year-old bridge triggered years of investigations into the upkeep of its decrepit infrastructure. A 50-metre (160-foot) excessive part of the bridge collapsed with as many as 35 automobiles on it, which fell onto warehouses and a riverbed beneath.
“I want to apologise to the victims’ households, to the folks of Genoa, and to all Italians for the struggling attributable to the tragic Morandi catastrophe, totally conscious that our gesture can by no means erase their ache,” Autostrade CEO Arrigo Giana wrote in an apology assertion on Wednesday.
Prosecutors argue that years of insufficient upkeep, ignored warning indicators and delayed security work contributed to the collapse, alleging that important work was postponed, whereas income continued to be generated and distributed.
The defence’s major argument was that the bridge had a hidden development defect, specifically corrosion of its cables, that precipitated its collapse, not a scarcity of upkeep.
