GENOA

Ponte Genova: prosecutors call Swiss expert ‘recused’ – Liguria


Prosecution excludes a few documents, defenses insist on expertise


(ANSA) – GENOA, NOVEMBER 21 – Swiss professor Bernhard Elsener, the investigating judge’s expert who was replaced during the first probative incident for the Morandi collapse after an interview with him on Swiss television, could return as a prosecution consultant. In that broadcast he had essentially anticipated some judgments and conclusions while the expert operations were still in progress. The prosecutors Massimo Terrile and Walter Cotugno asked for it during the trial for the collapse (August 14, 2018, 43 victims). The prosecution had cited him as an expert but the defense had opposed recalling the replacement of him with another expert. However, the two prosecutors insisted on the importance of the testimony requested of him, if the judges did not admit him as an expert, to hear him as a simple witness or as a consultant to the prosecutor’s office by appointing him at the hearing.

There are 58 people accused among former managers of Autostrade and Spea (the control that was in charge of maintenance) and technicians, former and current managers of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the public works superintendency. The two companies exited the process by negotiating around 30 million euros. According to the indictment, everyone knew about Morandi’s conditions but no one did anything following the logic of saving to ensure greater profits to be distributed to the shareholders.

Elsener had been interviewed in 2019 and had said that “the viaduct would not have collapsed if the company had carried out the maintenance. Why did the Morandi fall? It is based on a particular balancing system: when one of the stays is missing it becomes asymmetrical and falls. If all the pylons were repaired in 1993, the bridge would still be standing.”

Finally, at today’s hearing, the prosecutors explained that they had removed the summary testimonial information and interrogations from the mass of over 60,000 documents deposited, while they kept the sketchbooks of the wiretaps and the briefs deposited by the defendants because they were deemed acquirable.

Finally, the lawyer Massimo Ceresa Gastaldo reiterated the need for a new expert opinion on the stays not examined.

The hearing was postponed to Monday due to the objections of the defense on the documents. (HANDLE).

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