Prosecutors in the northern Italian town of Ivrea on Friday requested a court indict 33 people over deaths linked to asbestos at an Olivetti factory.
Among the people prosecutors requested be sent to trial for 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.
The case relates to suspicious deaths of 14 workers at the Olivetti factory in Ivrea, near Turin, who did jobs ranging from assembling typewriters, machine maintenance and 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 contaminated with asbestos fibers.
They were subsequently been diagnosed with illnesses including mesothelioma, a cancer linked to asbestos.
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.
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