A judge from Spain's National Audience court, José de la Mata, has charged former Congress deputy and justice minister for the community of Madrid Alfredo Prada in a case investigating irregularities in the development of the Madrid Justice Campus. Prada has been summonsed to testify on 27th March.
The judge's decision came in a ruling today. Also summonsed to court under investigation are three experts from the community of Madrid: Isabelino Baños Fernández, Mariano José Sanz Piñar and Alicio de la Heras Rodríguez. The four will be questioned having been previously responsible for the project's financial and contractual development.
The judge is investigating contracts worth 355.5 million euros (£304 million; $404 million), of which 324.7 million was for building contracts. The plan had been to bring together the main legal institutions based in Madrid in one place. 91.7 million euros of this money was paid, despite only one building being built: the Institute of Legal Medicine.
According to de la Mata, who is investigating charges of misuse of public funds, malfeasance and influence peddling among others, "the Madrid Justice Campus company didn't follow any criteria of economic-organisational rationality" and presented "a clear imbalance which was demonstrated in the existence of a powerful sphere of managerial staff and an extremely weak staff infrastructure".
Alfredo Prada
Prada was named by Pablo Casado when he became the leader of the PP last summer to head the party's Public Position Office, a body dedicated to detecting corrupt practices within the party. As it happens, he had been one of Casado's political patrons, and had even given him his first paycheck as a parliamentary adviser in the community of Madrid's justice ministry.