Ledger Details Payment To Firm Employing Laurie Coleman

A Texas businessman who claims he was forced to make $75,000 in secret payments to the wife of Minnesota Sen. Norman Coleman has produced documents showing cash transfers to an insurance firm that employs the senator's wife Laurie.

A lawyer for Paul McKim -- who is accusing Coleman pal Nasser Kazeminy of funneling cash to the Laurie Coleman -- handed over internal accounting sheets to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

They show a Kazeminy-controlled oil-rig servicing company paid "service fees" to the Mrs. Coleman's employer, the Hays Companies. McKim served as the company's CEO until last Friday.

(Here's the link. The key pages are 29-33.)

The documents, intended to bolster a lawsuit McKim filed Monday against Kazeminy over the latter's handling of the company's finances, includes an invoice for an April 2007 payment of $25,000 to the Hays company and a wire transfer showing the payout.

But the most interesting exhibit in an apprent ledger of "past due" payments to vendors that includes a $25,000 Hays payment -- circled in pen, with the handwritten instruction: "Please pull this detail and delete... 8/19/08"

Another document in the packet contains a possible, more vanilla explanation: payment of an annual $100,000 for "property...casualty and marine" coverage for the company, Deep Marine Technology.

Coleman is scheduled to address the McKim lawsuit shortly. He's campaign has called the allegations "false" and claimed it was part of an "eleventh hour attack" made on behalf of Coleman's Democratic opponent, Al Franken.