The shocking images of the collapse of the Genoa bridge, in which 43 people perished, have gone around the world. Four years later, a gigantic trial involving 59 defendants opened in this Italian port city to determine the responsibilities, Thursday, July 7. On August 14, 2018, in the pouring rain, the Morandi motorway bridge, an essential axis for local journeys and traffic between Italy and France, collapsed, throwing dozens of vehicles and their passengers into the void.
Under a transparent tent erected in the courtyard of the Genoa court, judge Paolo Lepri listed the names of a hundred lawyers for the defendants and the civil parties who were gathered there. The defendants, absent from this first purely formal hearing, are in particular prosecuted for “manslaughter”, “attack on transport safety” and “false public writing”. The debates, suspended during the summer, will resume on September 12. The duration of the trial is estimated at two or three years.
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This tragedy cast a harsh light on the poor state of transport infrastructure in Italy and on the troubled role of the company Autostrade per l’Italia (Aspi), accused of not having maintained the work of art to save money. on the back of security.
“The Morandi Bridge was a ticking time bomb. You could hear the ticking, but you didn’t know when it was going to explode”, Walter Cotugno, one of the prosecutors, said in February. For him, there is no doubt that the leaders of Autostrade and the engineering company Spea, in charge of maintenance, “were aware of the risk of collapse”but that they were reluctant to finance work in order to “preserving dividends” shareholders.
Most of the defendants are executives and technicians from the two companies, including the general manager of Autostrade at the time, Giovanni Castellucci, as well as the former boss of Spea Antonino Galata and civil servants from the Ministry of Infrastructure. If their former leaders find themselves on the bench of the accused, the companies Autostrade and Spea on the other hand escape the trial thanks to an amicable agreement concluded with the prosecution, providing for the payment of 29 million euros to the State.
>> “We accepted the compensation, with a heavy heart”
For Raffaele Caruso, a lawyer who represents the Committee of relatives of the victims of the Morandi bridge, this pact “constitutes a first acknowledgment of responsibility” from both companies. Only two families of victims refused to accept the compensation offered by Autostrade, which paid 60 million euros in total. They are therefore the only two families to attend the trial.