Trial requested for 33 in Olivetti asbestos case

(ANSA) - Ivrea, December 19 - Prosecutors in the northern Italian town of Ivrea on Friday requested that a court indict 33 people over deaths linked to asbestos at an Olivetti factory.
    Among the people prosecutors requested be sent to trial for charges including culpable homicide were high-profile Italian business figures Carlo De Benedetti, Roberto Colaninno and Corrado Passera, who was also Italy's transport and industry minister from 2011 to 2013. De Benedetti was president of the IT company, now part of the Telecom Italia group, from 1978 to 1996, Passera was its co-managing director from September 1992 to July 1996, while former Alitalia president Colaninno had a stint as CEO after that. De Benedetti's brother Franco and son Rodolfo, who also held executive positions at Olivetti, could be sent to trial too. The case relates to suspicious deaths of 14 workers at the Olivetti factory in Ivrea, near Turin, who did jobs ranging from assembling typewriters and machine maintenance to painting.
    The workers, who died after their retirements between 2003 and early 2013, had been employed between the 1960s and 1990s in areas of the plant that were allegedly contaminated with asbestos fibers.
    They were subsequently diagnosed with illnesses including mesothelioma, a cancer linked to asbestos.
    "Having taking note of the indictment request from the Ivrea prosectors office, Carlo De Benedetti reiterates that he has nothing to do with these events," read a statement given by De Benedetti spokesperson "He has faith that the individual role and specific functions he carried out within the corporate set-up of Olivetti will be clarified before the preliminary hearings judge".
    Colaninno also said he was innocent.
    "I took up the position of Olivetti CEO in September 1996 and from that date on I was never notified of any problems linked to the presence of asbestos in the work place," he said in a statement. Judges in the Court of Appeal in Turin had convicted an executive, Ottorino Beltrami, in November 2012.
    He was sentenced to six months in prison for manslaughter in connection with the death of an employee, but died at 96 before serving the sentence.