Genoa Bridge Collapse Throws Harsh Light on Benettons' Highway Billions - The New York ... - 0 views
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The Benettons made occasional, bipartisan political donations but those did not explain the company’s influence. Autostrade could perform perfectly legal favors for politicians, like modernizing a stretch of local highway.
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Several scholars say the skewed relationship resulted in a case of “regulatory capture,” the political scientists’ term for the situation when a watchdog bends to the interests of a company it is supposed to supervise.
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When a center-left government took power in 2006, Autostrade’s contract came under scrutiny. The government blocked the company from selling itself to Abertis, a Spanish toll road operator, then signaled that Autostrade needed to be reined in
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“The problem was not the merger itself,” Antonio Di Pietro, then the minister of infrastructure and transport, said in a statement, “but concession rules that are too favorable toward the motorway operator, so much so that they led to the bad habit of automatic tariff hikes.”
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The government approved a new law to encourage efficiency and lower tolls, except it never took effect. In 2008, the center-left government fell. The new conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon, took power and amended the new law to stipulate annual increases in tolls right through to the end of the contract
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Though it aided all of Italy’s toll road operators, Autostrade, the biggest, was the biggest beneficiary.
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Beyond fixing blame for the bridge collapse, a central question of the Morandi tragedy is what happened to safety inspections. The answer is that the inspectors worked for Autostrade more than for the state.
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For decades, Spea Engineering, a Milan-based company, has performed inspections on the bridge. If nominally independent, Spea is owned by Autostrade’s parent company, Atlantia, and Autostrade is also Spea’s largest customer. Spea’s offices in Rome and elsewhere are housed inside Autostrade.
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One former bridge design engineer for Spea, Giulio Rambelli, described Autostrade’s control over Spea as “absolute.”“They even approve promotions inside of Spea,
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Such potential conflicts are prohibited in other countries where Autostrade operates. In Chile, for instance, regulations block a private toll operator from hiring a company it owns to conduct inspections, according to Mariana Rocha, a spokeswoman at the country’s Ministry of Public Works.
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Mr. Fonderico, the administrative law professor from Luiss Guido Carli University, said the ministry actually lacked the expertise to carry out its oversight role, particularly on a bridge as vexing as the Morandi. Over time, he said, the government behaved more like its first priority was cooperating with Autostrade, rather than regulating it.
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Though the relationship between Autostrade and the government is now defined by pure hostility, a divorce is unlikely.The reason? If the company’s contract were terminated early, the state would need to pay Autostrade the remaining value of the contract, a sum that could exceed $17 billion.“The company would take the state to court,” Mr. Ponti said, “and it would win.”