Since 2010, eight years before the disaster, everyone knew that the Morandi bridge could collapse. During a meeting attended by the CEO of Aspi Giovanni Castellucci, the general manager Riccardo Mollo, Gilberto Benetton, the board of statutory auditors of Atlantia, Gianni Mion – former CEO of the Benetton Edizione holding company, former director of Aspi and of the its former parent company, Atlantia – manager, technicians and managers of Spea “it emerged that the bridge had an original design defect and which created doubts among the technicians as to whether it could remain up”. The shocking revelation comes nearly five years after the tragedy from the voice of one of the participants in that meeting in the courtroom of Genoa, where the trial is underway for the collapse that cost the lives of 43 people. A massacre that could have been avoided. It is Mion who says it, explaining that none of those present at the meeting raise objections to those critical issues. Except him.
“I asked if there was anyone who certified safety and Mollo replied ‘we self-certify it’. But no one thought it would collapse and we were given reassurances. I didn’t say anything, but I worried. The situation was simple: either it closed or an outsider certified it for you. I did nothing, and it is my great regret“. For the former managing director of the Benetton holding company, that “the stability of the work was self-certified was a c …, nonsense and it had impressed me”. But he did nothing.
“After that meeting I should have screwed up, but I didn’t. Maybe because I cared about my job. That’s how it went, nobody did anything and I’m sorry.” Words that violently reopened the wounds of the victims’ families. “A person in his role could not keep quiet – comments Egle Possetti, the president of the Victim Remembrance Committee with a voice broken by emotion – It’s all unacceptable, there will never be justice. Let’s just hope that someone pays and is satisfied. example so that there are no more situations of this kind in Italy”.
The problem, according to Mion, arises from the privatization of Autostrade. “Aspi made a mistake when it bought Spea, the company had to be within Anas or the ministry, it had to remain public. The controller could not have belonged to the subsidiary. I had the feeling that no one controlled anything. My idea is that there was a collapse of the internal and external control system and of the ministry there was no trace. My opinion, reading what emerged, is that nobody controlled anything”. This after the interceptions and the collapse in the Bertè tunnel (on the A26, on December 30, 2019, ed).
The current CEO was also heard before Mion Roberto Tomasi of Aspi, who reiterated that after his arrival more was invested in maintenance. That the checks were not thorough also emerged from his words. “In 2020, with the inspections done with our third party companies, we have seen an increase in risk coefficients of even more than 200% compared to those detected by Spea while in 2019 it was 50%. The level of degradation of the network was substantially worse than Spea’s inspections revealed. 27,000 defects were found throughout the network, with varying degrees of severity, not reported by Spea, 6,000 in the tunnels of Liguria alone. We thought it unreliable.”
Mion also retraced the idea of the merger between Atlantia and the Spanish Abertis for the management of the motorway network, an idea born in 2006 which created disagreements between him and the then CEO Vito Gamberale and the general director Giovanni Castellucci. “That merger was my idea because we were very unprepared. The management of the motorway network – Mion explains – was too difficult, so I hoped for third party intervention. Gamberale had supported it at the beginning and then when he saw the reaction against politics, she changed her mind. From that moment my role became marginal. Gilberto Benetton no longer followed me, he said it shouldn’t be done. He had total faith in Castellucci who thought we didn’t need foreign partners”.
The examination by the prosecutor Walter Cotugno then focused on the figure of Castellucci. “A very well-prepared person – recalls Mion – He was someone who investigated everything with great competence and sagacity. He also went into the details. With Aeroporti di Roma he created a masterpiece. Did I say he was a mad centralizer? Today I’m not able to answer. He he has done exceptional things, for Airports he has also drawn up the protocol for cleaning the windows and for removing the chewing gum”. The ex-manager told the financial police that “they did the clever things to get Castellucci acquitted in the process for the Avellino massacre”. “I said it – he concludes – because it was unthinkable that he didn’t know, that he wasn’t informed”.