Less than eight years after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge, a motorway viaduct that collapsed at 11:36 a.m. on August 14, 2018, killing 43 people, one of the most important and impressive trials to take place in Italian courtrooms is coming to an end. A Hearings against 57 people began on July 7, 2022, for a total of 284 hearings..
According to Deputy Prosecutors Walter Cotugno and Marco Airoldi, the culprits of this disaster are the managers and technicians of the time and former managers of Autostrade, Spea (the subsidiary responsible for supervision and maintenance), the Ministry of Transport and Supervision. According to the prosecutor’s office, savings could be made on road safety and maintenance over many years to guarantee more dividends to shareholders..
The charges for various reasons are: multiple manslaughter, vehicular homicide, willful collapse, dereliction of duty, violation of traffic safety, forgery and willful absence of workplace safety devices. Charges that required nearly 400 years in prison and acquittal. The highest sentence – 18 years and six months – was requested for Giovanni Castellucci, the former CEO of Aspi. He always denied the accusations: “I feel responsible, but not guilty.”
In four years of debate before President Paolo Lepri and his colleagues Ferdinando Baldini and Fulvio Polidori, they were 282 witnesses, four experts were heard. 12 accused were interrogated, and 21 gave spontaneous testimony. More than 200 civil plaintiffs were initially admitted (658 requested admission), with 168 remaining after some reached agreement.
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ANSA Agency Genoa: 43 victims of the Morandi Bridge collapse – PHOTO – News – Ansa.it Among them are families with children and teenagers, truck drivers, citizens of France, Albania and Colombia (ANSA).
The trial in the Morandi Bridge collapse case is impressive, also due to the amount of paper and computer evidence obtained by the financial police and presented at the hearings. More than 12 terabytes of documentation (including photographs and videos), 332 paper folders, 352 computer media, 24,213 pages of transcripts, 10,431 pages of brief reports, more than 5,000 pages of prosecutors’ final reports. Sixty-seven defenders of the accused, 33 civil plaintiffs. two companies, Aspi and Spea, walked out of court with a plea deal worth nearly $30 million. The investigation by the financial police lasted more than three years. Preliminary hearings lasted five months.
Three further lines of inquiry have emerged since the collapse: into false reports about viaducts, into dangerous sound barriers, and into false reports about tunnels and their failure to keep them safe. All three lines were combined into one trial involving 47 defendants. Meanwhile in Liguria, the construction sites on the motorway are not yet finished, the bridge has been restored according to the design of the star architect Renzo Piano, and there is not enough last mile to clear the memory under the viaduct. Castellucci is in prison for the Avellino tragedy, and the prosecutor, Massimo Terrile, who was on duty on August 14, retired and then died in May, having failed to see the end of the trial that he wanted, having studied every single document down to the last line.
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ANSA Agency The collapse of the Morandi Bridge wounded Genoa to the heart – News – Ansa.it The final death toll was 43 and more than 500 people were displaced (ANSA).
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