Espada faces additional charges from feds

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have added 10 new counts of wire fraud and tax cheating to charges against former state Sen. Pedro Espada, charged last year with misappropriating thousands from his Bronx health clinic.

Prosecutors said early this year that they were planning to include tax charges in a new indictment of Espada, 56, who is charged with his son Pedro Gautier Espada, 35, in the scheme connected with the Soundview Healthcare Network.

Espada gained notoriety when he switched parties in 2009, temporarily depriving Democrats of a majority and creating a logjam in the state Senate. He was defeated in a re-election bid in the fall.

The new 16-count indictment charges that Espada claimed expenses ranging from a ghostwriter for a biography and a videographer at a family birthday party to after-school tutoring and college tuition for family members as expenses of his nonprofit health-care empire.

Jury selection is set to begin in federal court in Brooklyn on Sept. 12.