July 16 (UPI) — The former CEO of the management company that runs Italy’s roadways was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a 2018 bridge collapse that killed 43 people.

Giovanni Castellucci, former CEO of Autostrade per l’Italia, was running the company when the Morandi Bridge in Genoa suddenly collapsed during a rainstorm, and 43 people in their vehicles fell 100 feet to their deaths.

Prosecutors had argued that maintenance of the structure had been repeatedly delayed and that warning signs were ignored. Defense attorneys blamed the disaster on a design flaw and that a specific cable was encased in concrete, the BBC reported.

The bridge in the northern Italian city was built by Riccardo Morandi in 1967.

There were 57 defendants in the case, and the prosecutors had asked for 400 years total. Some of the defendants were engineers from maintenance company Spea, former officials from the transportation ministry and some from ASPI’s parent company Atlantia.

Antonino Galatà, former CEO of Spea, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Mauro Coletta, former government official in the transportation ministry, was sentenced to five years. Former ASPI head of maintenance Michele Donferri was given 11 years, and Paolo Berti, second in charge at ASPI, got five years and six months.

The court convicted 32 defendants and gave out sentences of a total of almost 200 years for homicide, road homicide and culpable collapse. Another 25 defendants were acquitted or their cases timed out under statutes of limitations.

ASPI and Spea agreed to pay about $34 million.

On Wednesday, ASPI’s current CEO Arrigo Giana apologized for the disaster in an open letter published in Corriere della Sera. It said, “the actions and decisions of some people left indelible scars.”

The bridge was torn down and replaced. The new bridge, the Genoa San Giorgio Bridge, was designed by Genoa native Renzo Piano for free as a gift to the city. It opened in August 2020.

Castellucci is already serving a six-year prison sentence for another roadway disaster. In 2013, 40 people died in the southern city of Monteforte Irpino when a bus full of religious pilgrims on their way home from visiting a Catholic shrine lost its brakes, crashed and fell 100 feet into a ravine. The concrete barriers designed to keep vehicles on the road were found to be defective.