AN ITALIAN court in Genoa yesterday found that motorway unit Autostrade per l'Italia applied pressure on officials at a sister maintenance firm to falsify safety reports for several bridges to save money for parent company Atlantia.

In a court document seen by Reuters, three judges said for the first time that the pressure to cut costs had guided several employees of both Autostrade and maintenance company SPEA when producing the reports.

They did not find any evidence of wrongdoing by executives at Atlantia, the group which controls both Autostrade and SPEA.

Autostrade says on its website that it spent €5.43bn (£4.5bn) on maintenance from 2000 to 2018, approximately €196m more than it had promised to spend in its concession agreement with Italy's transport ministry.

The court finding could benefit Italy's ruling coalition party 5-Star Movement, which has been demanding that Atlantia be stripped of its lucrative concessions after 43 people were killed in the collapse of a Genoa bridge.

Reuters

(c) 2019 City A.M., source Newspaper