Ex-ASPI chief Castellucci gets 12 years for bridge collapse
The former head of Italy's largest motorway operator has been sentenced to 12 years for the fatal Genoa bridge collapse, highlighting the severe legal risks for European infrastructure companies that neglect maintenance.
Giovanni Castellucci, the former head of Italy's motorway network, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of negligence and vehicular homicide related to the deadly Genoa bridge collapse. The verdict, delivered in a court hearing that lasted less than 20 minutes, fell short of the 18-year sentence sought by prosecutors. Family members of the victims were present in the courtroom for the rapidly delivered decision.
The four-year trial centred on the systemic failure to maintain the structure, which was inaugurated in 1967. Magistrates established in their investigation that "not even minimal maintenance work was carried out" during the bridge's 51-year lifespan. Castellucci was specifically accused of postponing essential repairs to pier number nine, the structural point of failure.
For European investors and infrastructure operators, the case carries heavy implications regarding corporate governance. The majority of the 57 defendants were executives and technicians from ASPI and its maintenance contractor, Spea. ASPI operates almost half of Italy's entire motorway network, making it a cornerstone of the country's commercial logistics. The scale of the corporate indictment highlights how deeply operational negligence was embedded within the management of a major European transport concession.
The ruling also exposes a disturbing pattern of executive liability. Castellucci is already serving time for his role in a separate 2013 accident in which a bus crashed through the barriers of a viaduct, killing 40 people. For the wider European engineering and concessions sector, these consecutive convictions demonstrate that courts are increasingly willing to hold top management criminally responsible for systemic safety failures.
Transport infrastructure across Europe is ageing, requiring massive capital expenditure to remain safe and operational. The Genoa trial establishes a strict legal benchmark for what happens when companies defer necessary engineering work. Executives who ignore maintenance obligations now face a stark reality: they risk not only financial ruin for their firms but personal prison sentences for the resulting fatalities.
