Milan-Cortina Olympic Chaos Deepens: Graffer Loses Livigno Contract After Corruption Probe,

The infrastructure crisis engulfing the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics has taken another dramatic turn. Brescia-based construction firm Graffer has now lost two of the three cable car contracts it had been awarded for the Games — in Livigno and Bormio — while facing a penalty of over €2 million for delays at the already-controversial Socrepes facility in Cortina d'Ampezzo. What was once a showcase of Italian engineering ambition has become, by any measure, an admission of systemic failure.

The Livigno Collapse

The latest blow falls on Livigno, the high-altitude resort in the province of Sondrio sometimes called "little Tibet," which had received €160 million in public funding tied to Olympic projects. A €52.5 million contract — covering the cable connection of two ski slopes along with underground parking infrastructure — had been awarded to a consortium led by Graffer, alongside Lombardy-based Ecoedile and Belluno-based Dolomiti Strade.

The deal had raised eyebrows from the outset. In the original tender, Graffer's consortium had edged out two European industry giants — Leitner and Doppelmayr Italia — largely on the strength of an unusually steep discount. When prosecutors in Belluno opened a bid-rigging investigation focused on the separate Socrepes project in Cortina, that discount suddenly looked less like competitive pricing and more like a warning sign.

The contract has now been terminated by mutual agreement. Fabio Massimo Saldini, the commissioner and CEO of Infrastrutture Milano Cortina 2026 (Simico), confirmed the outcome in an interview with the Gazzettino: the Livigno contract will pass to Leitner, which had finished second in the original ranking.

Bormio Gone Too

The Livigno termination follows the earlier cancellation of Graffer's direct-award contract in Bormio, a facility valued at €44.8 million. Simico had accused Graffer of breaching its contractual obligations; Graffer contested those allegations and maintained the work was ready to begin. The dispute became moot. Saldini, himself questioned last month by Belluno prosecutor Massimo De Bortoli as part of the bid-rigging investigation, had already announced that termination publicly. Both Bormio and Livigno construction sites had not yet broken ground, meaning the contracts can now be re-tendered — though the delays to the overall Olympic infrastructure programme are severe and irreversible.

Socrepes: Unfinished, Penalised, and Scrambling to Catch Up

The third Graffer contract — the Socrepes gondola on the Mortisa slope in Cortina d'Ampezzo, valued at €35 million — remains technically active, but the relationship between Simico and the contractor has become openly adversarial. More than €2 million in penalties have already been withheld from Graffer's payments for construction delays, a substantial deduction on a mid-sized contract.

The facility itself remains an open construction site, highly visible and politically embarrassing, having failed to reach completion before the February 6 opening of the Olympic Games despite repeated assurances from all parties that it would be ready in time.

Saldini has now set what he described as "reasonable but strict interim deadlines" following a meeting of lawyers from both sides, and has warned that further penalties remain possible. His stated intention is to press on regardless: "We will finish it without regard for anyone. From August to November, the cabins will be operated in preparation for opening to the public in winter, with a temporary 400-space parking lot pending final approval of the overall plan." At best, the facility will open around six months behind the original schedule.

A New Scandal: The Bobsleigh Track

As if the cable car saga were not enough, a fresh chapter of Olympic mismanagement has emerged around the "Eugenio Monti" bobsleigh track — a facility that cost more than €130 million to build. Use of the track during the actual Olympic competitions caused nearly €2.5 million in damage to the structure.

Simico lodged the initial complaint, accompanied by photographic evidence, with the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 — the organising committee chaired by Giovanni Malagò with CEO Andrea Varnier — immediately after the competitions concluded. Early estimates had put the damage at around €1 million. The final accounting, now that the track has been returned by the Fondazione to the Municipality of Cortina and passed back to Simico for completion works, is considerably worse: €2.427 million in total, comprising approximately €1.5 million in direct structural damage and the remainder covering repairs to the track's roof, which was separately damaged when it partially collapsed under excessive snow load.

Simico will carry out the repair works, but the bill will be paid by the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 — an additional charge against an overall Olympic budget of approximately €2 billion that is already expected to fall significantly short of funding.

The Wider Reckoning

Taken together, the Graffer contracts, the Socrepes delays, and the bobsleigh track damage paint a picture of an Olympic infrastructure programme that was under-resourced, inadequately supervised, and in at least one case allegedly corrupted from the outset. The bid-rigging investigation in Belluno remains ongoing, and its conclusions could yet widen the circle of those held accountable.

For Italy, which staked considerable national prestige on delivering a successful home Winter Olympics, the long aftermath of Milan-Cortina 2026 is proving almost as difficult to manage as the Games themselves.