Prosecutors have sentenced the former head of Italy's motorway operator to 12 years in prison, for his role in the deadly collapse of Genoa's Morandi Bridge in 2018.
According to BBC News, prosecutors had asked for a longer jail term for former chief executive of Autostrade S.p.A. Giovanni Castellucci, who is already serving a six-year sentence stemming from a separate fatal crash on a viaduct outside of Naples in 2013. The case involving from the Morandi Bridge collapse included 57 defendants, ranging from maintenance firm engineers to other executives who worked under Castellucci.
Sections of the span collapsed during a torrential rainstorm in August of 2018, while the bridge was undergoing maintenance work to strengthen its road foundations. More than 40 people died in the incident, with another 16 people reporting injuries.
Investigators later found that the collapsed had started when a series of load-bearing cables had snapped, as a result of decades of corrosion dating back to the opening of the bridge 51 years prior. Prosecutors further alleged that Autostrade had delayed necessary maintenance and repairs to allow the operator to pay dividends to shareholders, while defendants argued that the collapse was caused by a construction flaw that was supposedly impossible to detect.
Autostrade's former head of maintenance Michele Donferri Mitelli was also sentenced to 11 years in jail, while the operator's second-in-charge Paolo Berti got five-and-a-half years. A handful of other officials were handed two-year sentences, while 25 others were either acquitted or cleared because the charges fell under a statute of limitations.
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