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Italian police arrest six in connection with Genoa bridge collapse

Italy's financial police have arrested the former boss of motorway operator Autostrade in connection with the deadly collapse of the Genoa bridge, officials said Wednesday.

Published: 12 November 2020 09:56 CET
Italian police arrest six in connection with Genoa bridge collapse
A file photo shows the now-rebuilt Genoa motorway bridge in 2018. Photo: Marco Bertorello/AFP

Police said they had imposed measures including house arrest on three former and three current managers of Autostrade, a subsidiary of Italian

infrastructure group Atlantia.
 
 
News reports said Giovanni Castellucci, the former boss of both Autostrade and Atlantia, was among those under house arrest.
 
The financial police said the allegations, part of an investigation running alongside the main probe into the bridge collapse, regarded transport safety and fraud.
 
Autostrade was responsible for maintenance on the Genoa bridge, which collapsed in August 2018 killing 43 people.
 
The collapsed bridge in August 2018. Photo: AFP
 
The officials are suspected notably of ignoring defects in the barriers on the bridge, despite the potential risk to road safety, particularly in strong
winds.
 
Castellucci's lawyers stressed that the arrests on Wednesday were part of a “completely separate” case from that of the bridge collapse.
 
 
In a statement carried by Italian media, they expressed confidence that the investigation would find he had done nothing wrong.
 
 
Autostrade along with several transport ministry officials is also under judicial investigation for culpable homicide over the bridge collapse..
 
A total of 74 people are accused in the ongoing legal case, which has seen investigators use a super computer to trawl through thousands of documents and files seized from Autostrade offices and the transport ministry.

The Morandi bridge has since been rebuilt, while many more of Italy's road bridges are now thought to be at risk of collapse.

READ ALSO: Did Italian authorities know Genoa's Morandi Bridge was at risk of collapse?

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CRIME

Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

Italy is conducting more investigations into alleged fraud of funds from the EU post-Covid fund and has higher estimated losses than any other country, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) said.

Published: 8 April 2024 17:05 CEST
Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

The EPPO reportedly placed Italy under special surveillance measures following findings that 179 out of a total of 206 investigations into alleged fraud of funds through the NextGenerationEU programme were in Italy, news agency Ansa reported.

Overall, Italy also had the highest amount of estimated damage to the EU budget related to active investigations into alleged fraud and financial wrongdoing of all types, the EPPO said in its annual report published on Friday.

The findings were published after a major international police investigation into fraud of EU recovery funds on Thursday, in which police seized 600 million euros’ worth of assets, including luxury villas and supercars, in northern Italy.

The European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, established to help countries bounce back from the economic blow dealt by the Covid pandemic, is worth more than 800 billion euros, financed in large part through common EU borrowing.

READ ALSO: ‘It would be a disaster’: Is Italy at risk of losing EU recovery funds?

Italy has been the largest beneficiary, awarded 194.4 billion euros through a combination of grants and loans – but there have long been warnings from law enforcement that Covid recovery funding would be targeted by organised crime groups.

2023 was reportedly the first year in which EU financial bodies had conducted audits into the use of funds under the NextGenerationEU program, of which the Recovery Fund is part.

The EPPO said that there were a total of 618 active investigations into alleged fraud cases in Italy at the end of 2023, worth 7.38 billion euros, including 5.22 billion euros from VAT fraud alone.

At the end of 2023, the EPPO had a total of 1,927 investigations open, with an overall estimated damage to the EU budget of 19.2 billion euros.

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