Almost eight years after the death of 43 people in the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, in the north-west of Italy, the former general director of the motorway company managing the viaduct was sentenced Thursday to twelve years in prison, the Genoa court announced on Thursday July 16.
Giovanni Castellucci, already in prison for another deadly accident that occurred in 2013 on a viaduct in southern Italy, was found guilty of negligence and involuntary manslaughter at the end of a trial which opened in 2022. “I feel responsible but not guilty,” he declared to the judges, despite the damning findings of the magistrates responsible for investigating this disaster whose images have gone around the world.
A verdict after eight years of waiting
They pointed out in particular that “between the inauguration (of the bridge) in 1967 and the collapse, 51 years later, minimal maintenance interventions were not carried out to reinforce the cables of pillar number 9”, which collapsed on the day of the tragedy. On August 14, 2018, at 11:36 a.m. local time, under pouring rain, the immense Morandi bridge located on the highway which connects Italy and France collapsed, throwing dozens of vehicles into the void.
The fragility of the cables was known and work had been carried out on two identical pillars, 10 and 11. Work was planned on 9. This tragedy had shed harsh light on the poor state of transport infrastructure in Italy and on the murky role of the motorway company Autostrade, accused of having failed to maintain the structure to save money.
