The name of this bridge should sound shrill in the ears of most Italians: Ponte Morandi was the name of the motorway bridge in Genoa over the Polcevera river, which collapsed on August 14, 2018.

43 people were killed in the disaster.

The official name of the bridge was Viadotto Polcevera, but it was widely called the Morandi Bridge, after the engineer Riccardo Morandi (1902 to 1989), the pioneer of prestressed concrete and the cable-stayed bridge.

Matthias Rüb

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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There is also a Morandi Bridge in Catanzaro, the capital of the southern Italian region of Calabria.

The official name is also different: Viadotto Fausto Bisantis, after the Calabrian local politician, during whose tenure as President of the Province of Catanzaro the decision to build the viaduct was taken.

The Morandi Bridge in Catanzaro is even older than the one in Genoa.

The viaduct, which connects the old town of Catanzaro with the suburbs and the industrial area in the west of the city and which clearly bears Morandi's signature, was completed after just three years of construction in 1962 - five years before the opening of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa.

"Everything falls apart here"

On Wednesday, the Morandi Bridge in Catanzaro was confiscated and temporarily blocked according to a decision by the responsible examining magistrate. The Sansisato tunnel along State Road 280 was also confiscated. Six suspects were arrested, including two contractors, a road construction officer and an officer from the financial police. They were charged on suspicion of fraud, money laundering and affiliation with the Mafia.

With the decision, the investigating judge Paola Ciriaco followed an application by the public prosecutor of Catanzaro under the direction of chief prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, currently the most important mafia hunter in southern Italy. As part of Operation Brooklyn against the Calabrian mafia organization 'ndrangheta, the prosecutors led by Gratteris had wiretapped the cell phones of the now arrested building contractors and their accomplices. You can hear the defendants talking about the use of inferior building materials in maintenance and repair work on the bridge after winning a public tender for the work in 2017. Cheaper concrete and mortar are used to keep costs down. The construction company that won the tenderthe prosecutor is convinced that the 'ndrangheta clan of Iannazzo from Lamezia Terme is under control.

In one of the intercepted and recorded conversations with the frustrated construction manager at the bridge, the head of the construction company affirmed that "for financial reasons" no other building material could be supplied.

To which the site manager replies: “This material is a bunch of shit ... you can't work with it.

Everything falls apart here. "

The seizure of the Morandi Bridge was met with outrage across Italy.

But also with relief, because the criminal machinations were discovered before a possible catastrophe.

The regional president Roberto Occhiuto expressed his thanks to the investigators on behalf of all Calabrians and affirmed: "One does not play with the security of the citizens."

On Wednesday, traffic over the confiscated bridge and through the tunnel was opened again.

The maintenance work with damaged material did not affect “the static safety of the structures”, announced the road construction authority.

Further investigations by the investigators into the bridge and tunnel could also be continued without the road sections concerned being permanently closed.

On Thursday, significantly less traffic was reported from Catanzaro over the Morandi Bridge than usual.