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“We did not do anything. Our days? In front of the computer on social networks or leaning against the desk to read a book. This is the story of one of the last employees of the Mantovani construction company published by Nuova Venezia in September 2019. Four years earlier, the construction group led to success by a Padua businessman, Romeo Chiarotto, had a turnover of 370 million and in the group’s offices worked 116.
Even Grandi Lavori Fincosit is no longer the same: from its financial statements we know that until 2016 it had an average turnover of 500 million. Already in 2017 it had dropped to 200 and initiated an agreement with the creditors.
But the most sensational case is that of Condotte Spa, the construction giant born in 1880, who has built everything, including the Italian side of the Mont Blanc tunnel. Survivor of Michele Sindona, the Iranian revolution that denied him payment for the construction of a port, the purchase by IRI and the privatization, with the last manager, Duccio Astaldi, having reached a turnover of 1.3 billion and employing 6,000 people in thirty countries. A symbol of Italian genius in the world. Since 2018 he has been in extraordinary administration and has disappeared from the radar.
What do these three companies have in common? These are the companies that have built the most important part of the Mose, the mobile dam that, by reducing skeptics to silence, since the beginning of the rainy season avoids the ordeal of high tide in Venice.
It will not work, it costs too much, it is expired, too much maintenance, they are eaten. This was what the critics were saying, a refrain that they now repeat in every great public work, to cry crocodile tears when Venice sinks with hundreds of millions of euros in damage. An attitude that has practically paralyzed large works in Italy in an already difficult phase, first due to the great financial crisis of 2008 and then to Covid, with very serious repercussions for the economy. Because critics do not just whisper: they expect projects that have already been examined and decided, reconsidered, reevaluated, subjected to referendums, to analysis of unlikely costs and benefits. Therefore, times and costs increase, creating opportunities for corruption. Except then complain about the delay of the works and the scandals.
In 2014, when the bribery scandal for the Mose broke out, it was discovered that some companies had paid precisely to guarantee the loans that kept coming with the dropper even though everything was already decided. There have been convictions and acquittals and some trials are still ongoing. But whatever the failures, the effect on companies that were the country’s heritage, capable of creating a visionary work whose entry into operation reported by the New York Times, is incredible.
Investigations have beheaded companies. At the moment, only some of the Mantovani executives have suffered or negotiated convictions. But we have not been able to separate its fate from that of the companies that were in the top ten of the “Top 50 of Italian construction”. Today, Mantovani has evaporated after an adventurous sale. Grandi Lavori fincosit is now a small company. Condotte Spa would still be third in the standings today, instead ending up in the commissioner’s often lethal tunnel. Have you ever heard someone admit they were wrong?
