• Ponte Morandi, Di Maio: Aspi explains why he wanted to demolish it. Atlantia: specious doubts
  • Ponte Morandi, down pillars 10 and 11: the structure is no longer there
  • In Genoa the first pouring of cement for the new bridge over the Polcevera
  • The hands of the Camorra on the demolition of the Morandi Bridge, 2 arrests and kidnappings
  • The implosion of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa seen from different angles
  • Ponte Morandi, the explosion observed from different places in Genoa
  • Genoa, the Morandi bridge comes down: the video

Share

30 June 2019 "The Morandi bridge has been definitively demolished and soon the reconstruction work will begin, but the fundamental objective, today as yesterday, is to do justice: we owe it to the people who have lost their lives, their families, the citizens who trust us every day ". Thus begins the hard post published on the Blog of the Stars with which the pentastellars return to invoke as a "moral duty" the stop to public concessions to the Autostrade per l'Italia (Aspi) company. "To do justice - we read - we need to punish those who have allowed a bridge to collapse in a country like Italy, killing 43 people. From a criminal point of view the judiciary will take care of it, but from the political point of view the government must do it. And it will do it, because in Genoa it was the lack of maintenance to kill. We repeat it loud and clear, for the avoidance of doubt ".

The Benetton "system"
The 5 star accusatory index points to the "Benetton system" and to the "shame convention" guaranteed to the Autostrade company by the parties of the past. "Aspi - it is written on the Blog of the Stars - has collected about 9.5 billion euros of profits since its name Autostrade per l'Italia. If instead we consider the accounts since 1999, when the management of the great road network has been privatized , the company earned over 10 billion, most of which flowed in the form of dividends to the holding company Atlantia which used them to remunerate its shareholders and finance the company's diversification activity ".

Toll grown and maintenance decreased
"And the investments? The numbers - the blog continues - say that in the last few years profits have increased, but investments have fallen. The Ministry of Transport has made it known that in 2016 Autostrade collected 3.1 billion with 624 million in profits net of taxes thanks also to the increase in tolls At the toll booth the price has risen by 30% in 10 years, the same cannot be said for maintenance, the figures that all the managers (not only Autostrade per l'Italia) have spent on investments have fallen and even the basic maintenance has fallen in a year by 7%. And you know how much Aspi spent for the structural maintenance of the Morandi Bridge? 23 thousand euros a year. Nothing. Before the privatization of 1999, instead 1.3 million euros were spent every year on the same bridge (source Inspection Commission Ministry of Transport on the reasons for the collapse) .This is the tragic difference between a management attentive to the interests of the citizens and an exclusive management aimed at exclusively to private profit ".

The list of advantages
For the 5 stars Aspi has therefore "made incredible gains from armored conventions by law, which guaranteed the following advantages: 1 - The return to the weighted average cost of capital over 10% gross, corresponding to a net return of 7-8% per annum front of government bond yields around 2-3% Very high capital returns, out of the market 2 - Halter conditions in the event that the concession was revoked in advance, with the State obliging to compensate the concessionaire for the presumed profits that he would have received until the end of the concession (in the case of Aspi until 2038); 3 - Extra profits on traffic data: in the financial plans the dealers kept traffic forecasts low to justify tariff increases and when the volume of real traffic turned out to be higher than expected revenues returned only in a small part in a special fund, while most were pocketed by dealers, 4 - poor controls by part of the grantor of the Ministry with regard to maintenance: the checks were carried out often and willingly without going to try on the field conditions of the highways. The Ministry "trusted" the dealer cards; Advantages all the more hateful taking into account that the motorway network is a natural monopoly, that is an infrastructure which by its nature does not fall within the logic of competition and the free market, because at the level of costs it is convenient that only one actor takes care of it. Giving a private monopoly to a natural monopoly is a crime, but doing it under the crazy conditions just remembered is even worse ".

How to get out of the impasse?
According to the pentastellati "We have to put an end to all this, and in this year of government we have already begun to correct some distortions, for example by blocking the increases at motorway exits until June. Now all the dealers, including Autostrade per l'Italia, have decided that until 15 September the price increases scheduled for July 1 will not be triggered. "But - it is emphasized - in the case of Autostrade the sacrosanct stop to rate increases cannot be enough. As a government we have the duty to steal the Italian motorways from the hands of those who have earned monstrous figures without adequately investing in the maintenance and safety of citizens. Stopping the public concession is a moral duty ".

Minister Toninelli
The controversy between the 5 stars and Autostrade per l'Italia had started a few hours after the felling of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, when the Minister of Transport, Danilo Toninelli, had announced that he had "returned the opinion of the technical commission of experts in support of the ministry and what from a summary reading we can begin to say is that a serious breach is evidenced by the Autostrade per l'Italia dealer and this is the basis for moving forward ".