Alfredo Prada, second vice-president of the first government of Esperanza Aguirre (2003-2007), was looking forward to a very happy time when his boss, newly elected president of the Community of Madrid, commissioned him with a project full of lights and money perfect for shining. Aguirre decided to build the future City of Justice on a vacant lot in the northeast of Madrid, where all the judicial bodies would be concentrated, then (and now) very dispersed and deteriorated.
Prada’s management of the public company Ciudad de la Justicia led him to urgently hire Norman Foster, an international star of architecture, and to advertise in the media more buildings designed by the best in the world. All of this was “enthusiastically shared by the Government of the Community of Madrid with its president at the helm,” according to the latest ruling by the National Court, which has sentenced Alfredo Prada to seven years in prison for a crime of prevarication in a joint venture with another of aggravated embezzlement. The court considers proven the rigging of up to 24 contracts for 40 million euros spent on the construction of the Campus of Justice between 2005 and 2011. That bright project that Aguirre commissioned from her vice president is today an abandoned wasteland, with only one building half-built and a cost of more than 200 million euros thrown away.
The conviction of Alfredo Prada closes the circle on what is already, according to the courts, the most corrupt government in the 42-year history of the Community of Madrid. The top brass of that Executive and other PP officials, with the exception of Aguirre, have accumulated more than 100 years in prison in various corruption convictions. Several of its leaders will face similar sentences in the coming months in pending trials.
The first vice-president, Ignacio González, spent nine months in preventive detention. The prosecutor is asking for long prison sentences for González in three different cases: the purchase of a Brazilian company by the Canal de Isabel II, a ruinous operation with an overprice that was supposedly shared by the directors of the public company; the train to Navalcarnero, a privatised project that got bogged down; and the construction of a golf course in the centre of Madrid, an idea of Esperanza Aguirre.
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Second Vice President Alfredo Prada, now sentenced to seven years in prison, was expelled by Aguirre from her government when she found out that he was supporting Rajoy in her bid for the leadership of the party; a judicial investigation that ended in a trial and without a conviction proved that Prada had been spied on by security agents of the Community of Madrid.
The Gürtel plot, the most extensive network of corruption that colonised the PP for a decade, took root in the Community of Madrid, where it obtained dozens of contracts, many dedicated to events to show off Aguirre and propaganda for her Government. The deputy minister Alberto López Viejo – later appointed by her as Minister of Sports – received a commission from the beneficiary companies for each event held. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Aguirre appointed Guillermo Ortega as general manager of a public company after forcing him to resign as mayor of Majadahonda on suspicion of corruption. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in the Gürtel case. Two other PP mayors were sentenced in the same case: Jesús Sepúlveda (Pozuelo de Alarcón, 14 years in prison) and Arturo González (Boadilla del Monte, 36 years).
Francisco Granados, secretary general of the PP-Madrid, regional councillor and senator with Aguirre at the head of the party, was sentenced to two years in prison; he spent more than three years in preventive detention for the Púnica case and now faces long prison sentences for the case of illegal financing of the PP-Madrid during Aguirre’s mandate.
This case will also see the manager of PP-Madrid, Beltrán Gutiérrez, and Aguirre’s communications director, Isabel Gallego, in the dock. The prosecution accuses them of having collaborated in illegally financing Aguirre’s own image campaigns or the electoral events of PP-Madrid with Aguirre as a candidate for president.
The judge admits that the main beneficiary of the alleged crimes committed by the accused leaders was the former president of Madrid, but it could not be proven that “Aguirre had knowledge of the contracting of the work, of its development, or of how it was paid for.” Isabel Gallego refuted this theory in her appeal: “Aguirre was and is perfectly aware of the news that is published and that it was in her interest as president to improve her institutional image. It is irrational to maintain the contrary.” The prosecution unsuccessfully requested that Aguirre be brought to trial, at least as a lucrative participant in the crimes committed by her collaborators.
These legal proceedings were opened in 2014, when Aguirre had already resigned for personal reasons as president of the Community of Madrid, but continued to preside over the PP-Madrid. She did so until 2017, when she resigned after learning that a judge had sent to provisional prison the person who had been her vice president for so long, Ignacio González. She then declared: “I feel deceived and betrayed. I did not keep watch as much as I should have. That is why I resign.”
The sentence that condemned part of the Valencian PP for illegal financing through contractors of the regional administration left a conclusion similar to that which the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office maintained for a time when requesting the indictment of Aguirre: “Whoever places themselves in a situation of deliberate ignorance without wanting to know what they can and should know, must answer for the consequences.”
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