MADRID, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The president of the Spanish Senate, Pio Garcia Escudero, will have to testify for the trial of Gurtel, a corruption scandal involving the ruling People's Party (PP), local media reported on Wednesday.
Garcia Escudero will have to appear in court to explain how the PP in Madrid was financed while he was the president of the party in the Community of Madrid. So far, all authorities appearing in court, such as Esperanza Aguirre or Alvarez Cascos, said they did not know how the party was financed.
Along with him, the former secretary general of the regional PP, Ricardo Romero de Tejada, and the former regional coordinator for the electoral campaign in Madrid, Manuel Fernandez Norniella, will also testify.
Both of them have already been sentenced for the "black credit cards" case, involving several executives and board members at Caja Madrid who used credit cards whose money did not show up on any bank document or job contract.
The Gurtel case investigates a slush fund in the PP created thanks to kickbacks from the so-called Gurtel network of businesses that operated across six Spanish regions between 1999 and 2005.
The witnesses should appear in court between July 19 and 26, when Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is scheduled to testify also as witness.
