Former Autostrade per l’Italia CEO Giovanni Castellucci was sentenced to 12 years in prison on July 16 after an Italian court handed down the first criminal sentences stemming from the 2018 Morandi Bridge collapse that killed 43 people.
The Court of Genoa convicted 32 former road managers, engineers and public officials after concluding an eight-year criminal case to examine the collapse of the Polcevera viaduct.
Former Autostrade maintenance chief Michele Donferri Mitelli received an 11-year sentence, while other defendants received lesser prison terms. The ruling also included an acquittal and dismissal of some charges because statutes of limitations had expired. According to the sentencing order published by Genoa broadcaster Telenord, the court’s written opinion must be submitted within 90 days, subject to a possible legal extension.
The allegation arose on 14 August 2018, the collapse of around 200m of the viaduct during a rainstorm, causing vehicles to sink onto railway tracks, warehouses and city streets below. The disaster cut off one of the main motorway links in northern Italy and prompted extensive engineering research.
Before the collapse, Autostrade had solicited bids for a roughly $23 million project to strengthen the stays at Piers 9 and 10, but construction had not begun. The damaged bridge was later demolished and replaced by the Genoa San Giorgio Bridge, designed by Renzo Piano, which opened in 2020.
The court assigns responsibilities throughout the infrastructure chain
The Morandi Bridge used a small number of concrete-embedded tin cables, unlike modern cable-stayed bridges that distribute the loads across many exposed steel spans. Prosecutors argued that deterioration in a stay at Pier 9 contributed to the 2018 collapse that killed 43 people.
Chart courtesy of Kaiser Science
In a statement accompanying the verdict, the Court of Genoa said the case centered on what it described as a “system of defects” at the top of the Genoa-sea stay of Pier 9 that formed the mechanism for the collapse. The court said the trial looked at whether the failure was foreseeable and avoidable.
The court said liability extended through the chain of inspection, supervision and delivery of bridge projects. Among those convicted were personnel from Autostrade per l’Italia and its engineering, inspection and maintenance subsidiary SPEA; officials responsible for overseeing the concessionaire on behalf of Italy’s infrastructure ministry; participants in the design of the reinforcement works planned for piers 9 and 10; and members of the Technical-Administrative Commission that reviewed the project.
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The criminal case also examined an unfinished strengthening program for Piers 9 and 10.
Following the collapse of Genoa’s Morandi Bridge on August 14, 2018, the damaged viaduct was demolished and replaced by the Renzo Piano-designed Genoa San Giorgio Bridge, which opened to traffic in 2020. This 2019 image shows the deck modules being assembled during construction.
Photo by PerGenova
Design work on the reinforcement program began in 2015 and progressed through preliminary, final and executive phases, but the project did not reach construction. The court said it assessed the roles of the contracting authority, designers and project reviewers involved in assigning criminal liability.
The court said the defendants’ responsibilities arose under bridge monitoring requirements, public procurement rules and engineering standards, including a 1967 Ministry of Public Works circular regulating road structures and Italy’s 2008 Technical Rules for Construction.
The court also distinguished between the objective foreseeability of the collapse and the state of mind of the defendants.
He concluded that the failure was foreseeable and avoidable, but did not find that the defendants actually anticipated the collapse and knowingly relied on its failure to occur. Instead, the convictions were based on findings of negligence without actual foresight of the event.
Expert Error Inspection Methods
The Italian Ministry of Infrastructure’s post-collapse commission found that the reflectometric monitoring used to assess the condition of the bridge’s prestressing wires was qualitative and only sampled a portion of the cables, limiting its ability to determine their true condition.
According to Italian public broadcaster RAI, court-appointed experts later concluded in a supplementary report prepared during the criminal trial that the inspections carried out by Autostrade and SPEA were insufficient and unreliable to determine the deterioration of the steel cables on Pier 9 stays.
The experts found that no direct examination had ever been carried out at the top of the Genoa stay, despite previously identified defects at piers 10 and 11, and concluded that core and endoscopic inspections should have been carried out, as non-destructive testing alone could not establish the condition of the cables.
Experts also rejected a defense theory that the corrosion was the result solely of oxygen trapped in a hidden construction void. According to RAI’s account of the supplementary report, prosecutors’ experts concluded that the amount of corroded steel required more oxygen than a cavity could have contained, and instead pointed to long-term intrusion of water and oxygen through cracks in the concrete.
Resource of defense plans
Castellucci’s lawyers said they would appeal, arguing the verdict improperly separated criminal responsibility from specific personal conduct.
“The gravity of the event requires that justice continue to be based on establishing individual responsibility and not on the search for a scapegoat,” the defense said in a statement released after the sentencing.
Lawyers argued that the collapse was the result of an undiscovered construction defect that went unnoticed for more than 50 years despite reviews by designers, builders, public authorities, private operators and engineering experts.
They also argued that the trial did not establish any policy of sacrificing maintenance spending to save costs and said Castellucci supported the reinforcement work approved by the Autostrade board.
The president of the victims’ committee, Egle Possetti, said the verdict established responsibility not only among company officials, but within the public oversight system.
“Specific responsibilities have been established for specific individuals,” Possetti said after the ruling, according to ANSA. He added that the decision also found fault with public oversight because “no controller stopped the operator.”
Autostrade per l’Italia responded before the verdict by issuing its first formal apology for the disaster.
In an open letter published on July 15, CEO Arrigo Giana said the company’s failure to apologize immediately after the collapse had exacerbated the suffering of the victims’ families.
“The actions and choices of some left indelible wounds,” Giana wrote.
Calling the long-delayed apology “our moral imperative,” according to ANSA, he said the company now operates under different ownership and management with a renewed emphasis on infrastructure monitoring, maintenance planning and risk prevention.
The trial at first instance was ranked among Italy’s largest infrastructure prosecutions. According to the Court of Genoa, the proceedings spanned 284 hearings, including the testimony of 282 witnesses and technical consultants, generated more than 24,000 pages of hearing transcripts and involved approximately 12 terabytes of documentary evidence.
The court’s written opinion, due 90 days unless the filing deadline is extended, is expected to explain how the justices weighed the opposing engineering theories presented during the trial and apportioned criminal liability among executives, engineers, designers and public officials.
All convictions remain subject to appeal.
