{"id":139389,"date":"2026-07-16T07:41:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T13:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/former-ceo-of-italian-highway-operator-handed-a-12-year-sentence-over-deadly-2018-bridge-collapse\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T13:44:20","slug":"former-ceo-of-italian-highway-operator-handed-a-12-year-sentence-over-deadly-2018-bridge-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/former-ceo-of-italian-highway-operator-handed-a-12-year-sentence-over-deadly-2018-bridge-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian court convicts 30 including former highway operator CEO in deadly 2018 bridge collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FILE
FILE – Cars are blocked on the Morandi highway bridge after a section of it collapsed, Aug. 14, 2018, in Genoa, northern Italy. (AP Photo\/Antonio Calanni, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Antonio Calanni, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GENOA, Italy (AP) \u2014 An Italian court on Thursday convicted the former CEO of Italy’s main highway operator and 29 others in the 2018 Genoa highway bridge<\/a> collapse that sent vehicles plunging and killed 43 people, a disaster that exposed serious lapses in the maintenance of Italian infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Dozens of family members of the victims packed the courtroom as Chief Judge Paolo Lepri read the verdicts against 57 defendants, including former executives and officials. Many relatives broke down in tears as the sentences were read.<\/p>\n

The former chief executive of highway operator Autostrade per l’Italia, Giovanni Castellucci, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the highest in the case after four years of trial and four hours of deliberations.<\/p>\n

Also convicted were Autostrade\u2019s former head of maintenance, Michele Donferri Mitelli, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The former CEO of the SPEA engineering company, Antonino Galat\u00e0, received five years and six months.<\/p>\n

Defendants faced charges including negligence resulting in the collapse and manslaughter stemming from alleged failures to maintain the bridge, which was part of a main route linking northern Italy with the French Riviera.<\/p>\n

In total, 30 people were convicted and handed sentences ranging from 1 year and 11 months to 12 years. Others were either found not guilty, or lesser charges had expired under the statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is important that responsibility extends beyond those at the top. Autostrade, SPEA and the Transport Ministry all had roles to play. I hope the state\u2019s responsibility also emerges clearly,\u201d Egle Possetti, who heads a committee to preserve the memory of the bridge victims, told reporters outside the courthouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lost my sister, her two children, my brother-in-law and even their little dog. That\u2019s where my determination comes from \u2014 to make sure they receive justice and that their deaths were not in vain,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Shortly before noon on Aug. 14, 2018, a 200-meter (650-foot) section<\/a> of Genoa\u2019s Morandi highway bridge gave way during a rainstorm, sending dozens of vehicles plunging to the ground.<\/p>\n

Images of the collapsed bridge were seen around the world and shocked Italians on one of Italy\u2019s busiest travel days, as millions headed out for the traditional Aug. 15 Ferragosto holiday that marks the peak summer vacation season.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors argued that years of maintenance neglect led to the collapse, and demanded combined sentences totaling nearly 400 years for all of the defendants. The defendants denied wrongdoing and say the fault was caused by a construction defect.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur expectation is to feel our pain recognized \u2026 and to have it acknowledged that this did not happen by chance, but because of serious failures in maintenance,\u201d said Raffaele Caruso, one of the lawyers representing victims.<\/p>\n

Considered an engineering marvel when it opened in 1967, the Morandi featured three A-shaped concrete pylons and concrete-encased stay cables.<\/p>\n

Caruso, who represents the family members of three victims, said that the trial showed that warning signs about defects in the pylon that collapsed had existed for decades. He cited maintenance on the other two starting in 1993 that was never extended to the third.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom 1993 onward, the problem was known. We had three identical pylons. Two had already shown the same defect, and no one seriously asked whether the third one had it as well,\u201d Caruso said.<\/p>\n

The current Autostrade chief executive, Arrigo Giana, issued a public apology Thursday in an open letter published in major Italian dailies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe actions and decisions of some people left indelible scars,\u2019\u2019 said Giana, who joined Autostrade as CEO last year. \u201cOffering today the apology that was not made then is, for us, a moral imperative that goes beyond establishing legal responsibility and the course of justice toward the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Autostrade and its subsidiary reached a deal on corporate liability earlier in the proceedings, paying roughly 30 million euros ($34 million) in financial penalties. The agreement spared the companies from a trial as corporate defendants and potentially much harsher sanctions, including exclusion from public contracts.<\/p>\n

The settlements were reached after the companies adopted new compliance procedures aimed at preventing similar accidents, and after victims were compensated.<\/p>\n

A new bridge designed by Genoa-born Italian architect Renzo Piano<\/a> opened in 2020, spanning a memorial to the victims of the Morandi Bridge collapse.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Colleen Barry reported from Milan.<\/p>\n

\"FILE
FILE – A vehicle sits short of a section of the Morandi highway bridge that collapsed on Aug. 15, 2018, in Genoa, northern Italy. (AP Photo\/Antonio Calanni, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Antonio Calanni, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FILE – Cars are blocked on the Morandi highway bridge after a section of it collapsed, Aug. 14, 2018, in Genoa, northern Italy. (AP Photo\/Antonio Calanni, File)(AP Photo\/Antonio Calanni, File) GENOA, Italy (AP) \u2014 An Italian court on Thursday convicted the former CEO of Italy’s main highway operator and 29 others in the 2018 Genoa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-139389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139398,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139389\/revisions\/139398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139389"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=139389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}