IN Brief:
- Thirty-two of the 57 defendants received convictions following the four-year Genoa trial.
- Former Autostrade chief executive Giovanni Castellucci received the longest sentence, at 12 years.
- The court’s summary found the collapse foreseeable and preventable, with full reasoning still to follow.
An Italian court has convicted the former chief executive of Autostrade per l’Italia and 31 other defendants over the 2018 collapse of Genoa’s Morandi Bridge, which killed 43 people.
Giovanni Castellucci received a 12-year prison sentence, the longest imposed in the proceedings. Former Autostrade maintenance head Michele Donferri Mitelli was sentenced to 11 years, while Antonino Galatà, former chief executive of engineering company SPEA, received five years and six months.
After a four-year trial involving 57 defendants, the court returned convictions against former concession-company executives, maintenance personnel, engineering-company representatives, and transport-ministry officials. Other defendants were acquitted or saw lesser charges expire under statutory limitation rules.
The convictions and sentences remain subject to appeal. Castellucci’s lawyers have confirmed that they intend to challenge the decision, while the court is expected to publish its full written reasoning within six months.
A summary issued with the verdict identified defects affecting one of the bridge’s stay cables and concluded that the collapse was foreseeable and preventable. The charges considered by the court included negligence resulting in collapse, aggravated manslaughter, and vehicular homicide connected with monitoring and maintenance failures.
During a rainstorm on 14 August 2018, a section of the bridge approximately 200 metres long collapsed, sending vehicles to the ground below. The structure formed part of a major motorway route connecting northern Italy with the French Riviera.
Opened in 1967, the Morandi Bridge used distinctive reinforced-concrete pylons and concrete-encased stay cables. Evidence presented during the trial examined the condition of those elements, earlier indications of deterioration, inspection activity, maintenance decisions, and the oversight exercised by the highway concession and public authorities.
Asset information must lead to intervention
The verdicts return attention to the gap that can develop between identifying deterioration and authorising sufficient remedial work. Major structures generate inspection reports, monitoring data, engineering assessments, maintenance records, and risk recommendations over decades, but those records only protect an asset when responsibility for review, escalation, funding, and closure is clearly assigned.
Ageing infrastructure seldom fails because no information exists at all. More often, different organisations hold fragments of the picture, apply inconsistent risk thresholds, or assume that another party is responsible for moving from observation to intervention.
Concession arrangements introduce contractual boundaries between the asset owner, operator, engineering adviser, maintenance contractor, and regulator. Those divisions can support specialist oversight, although they can also create uncertainty where technical recommendations, commercial approval, and statutory responsibility do not align.
Bridge management requires more than periodic visual inspection, particularly where access limitations, hidden elements, material deterioration, water ingress, fatigue, corrosion, previous repairs, and unusual structural details demand targeted investigation. Inspection intervals should reflect known vulnerability rather than relying only on a standard calendar.
Records must also preserve the history of individual components. A defect that appears tolerable in isolation may become more serious when considered alongside earlier repairs, repeated observations, or deterioration in comparable elements.
Long-lived assets therefore need information systems capable of carrying that history across changes in staff, contractors, software, and concession ownership. Without continuity, each new inspection risks being assessed without the context needed to understand whether deterioration is accelerating.
Funding decisions remain inseparable from engineering judgement because maintenance budgets are finite and asset managers must prioritise work across large networks. Transparent assessment of safety consequence, uncertainty, deterioration rate, route importance, temporary mitigation, and the cost of delay is needed when interventions compete for capital.
Independent challenge becomes particularly important where an operator’s commercial incentives may favour continued use or postponed expenditure. Regulators and public authorities need sufficient technical capacity to examine evidence directly rather than relying entirely on assurance produced within the concession structure.
Autostrade and SPEA previously settled corporate-liability proceedings through financial penalties and the adoption of new compliance measures. The latest verdicts concern individual defendants, and the appeal process means the legal position is not yet final.
The replacement Genoa San Giorgio Bridge opened in 2020, restoring the route on a new structure designed by Renzo Piano. Its completion resolved the immediate transport break, while the criminal proceedings continued to examine decisions made during the life of the bridge it replaced.
The court’s full reasoning will provide further detail on how responsibility was allocated between individuals and organisations. For infrastructure owners elsewhere, the engineering requirement remains direct: inspection findings must be converted into owned, traceable, and time-bound decisions before deterioration removes the option of controlled intervention.
