Airline owners awarded $140 million by Italy for the 1980 crash

Milan prosecutors said on Wednesday that Italian police had taken 130 million euros ($140 million) from two directors of an airline that had filed for bankruptcy after an aircraft accident in 1980 above the southern Italian island of Ustica claimed 81 lives.

Unsolved questions surrounding the ‘Ustica massacre’ are part of modern Italian history. The reason of the in-flight explosion aboard the DC 9 airplane that took off from Bologna and was heading for Palermo has never been determined, despite 40 years of studies and trials.

The Guardia di Finanza police carried out a seizure on Wednesday in connection with civil court proceedings that concluded in 2023 with an order for the transport and defense ministries to pay 330 million euros to the now-defunct airline Itavia.

The company had closed six months after the accident, and the payout was intended to appease its creditors.

The Milan prosecutors stated that two anonymous individuals, who had taken over as Itavia’s majority shareholders when the firm was under special administration, had emptied the company of its assets and embezzled 130 million euros for their personal gain.

“They almost wiped out the remaining company assets from the compensation payments,” according to prosecutors.

“In particular, the 130 million euros funding was also partly used to pay off the bank loan used by the two to acquire the majority stake in Itavia,” they stated in their press release.

One dollar is equal to 0.9301 euros.