Genoa bridge chief sentenced to 12 years over 2018 collapse that killed 43

Giovanni Castellucci, who headed Italy's motorway operator Autostrade when the Morandi Bridge in Genoa collapsed in August 2018, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for vehicular homicide and negligence. According to the Guardian, BBC and France 24, a court on Thursday convicted 32 defendants in total, while 25 others were acquitted or cleared. The verdict marks the formal conclusion of a trial that has laid bare the regulatory and maintenance failures that allowed a critical piece of infrastructure to fail catastrophically.

The collapse of the bridge—a 1.2-kilometre span that carried motorway traffic over the Polcevera valley—remains one of Italy's deadliest infrastructure disasters in recent decades. Autostrade had held the concession to operate the motorway since 1972 and was responsible for maintaining the bridge, including the cable-stayed towers that supported its deck. France 24 reported that the court found the company and its leadership guilty of failing to conduct adequate inspections and repairs despite knowledge of corrosion and structural degradation in the steel cables.