Paul McKim

Minnesota businessman Nasser Kazeminy is asking a Texas court for $400,000 from a man who said Kazeminy funneled money to former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. A judge in Houston hears Kazeminy’s defamation complaint today.

Nasser Kazeminy’s attorney threatened to go to court to prove defamation after a Texas judge on Friday halted a lawsuit alleging his client funneled $100,000 to then-U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

As the Minnesota Independent reported yesterday, a business merger has scuttled a lawsuit that implicated a Norm Coleman benefactor in a money-funneling scheme. Now Coleman tells the Star Tribune he’s glad for the imminent demise of the Texas civil-court complaint that has dogged him (though it doesn’t name him) since last October. The suit, which alleges [...]

The lawsuit alleging that Nasser Kazeminy funneled $75,000 to Norm Coleman because “senators don’t make shit” should be discontinued, says the Texas attorney who brought the case. But future legal action could still revive the matter, Casey Wallace says.

All of the allegations contained in a pair of lawsuits detailing a purported scheme to funnel $100,000 to then-U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman are false, according to the findings of a Special Litigation Committee appointed by the company at the center of the legal dispute. The lawsuits allege that Nasser Kazeminy and his allies were responsible for gross fiscal mismanagement of Deep Marine Technology, a Houston-based underwater services firm. Among the alleged waste: an attempt by Kazeminy to provide funds to Coleman through a Minneapolis insurance firm where the former senator’s wife was employed.

The U.S. Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken appears to be nearing an end. But a Texas legal battle that could also have grave political consequences for Coleman doesn’t seem likely to be resolved any time soon.

Here are two long, transcribed excerpts from B.J. Thomas’ deposition on March 19. Thomas was formerly chief financial officer of the Texas-based marine-services firm Deep Marine Technology.
The deposition was part of a civil lawsuit filed by Thomas and former Deep Marine CEO Paul McKim in Texas in October 2008. The suit implicates Minnesota businessman Nasser Kazeminy [...]

A Texas lawsuit that alleges Nasser Kazeminy, a longtime associate of Norm Coleman, attempted to improperly funnel $75,000 to the former senator has been delayed for 60 days.  Attorneys for Deep Marine Technology, a Houston-based company controlled by Kazeminy, successfully argued that the firm needs additional time to conduct an internal investigation of the allegations.

Minnesota’s U.S. Senate contest is not likely to be settled any time soon. Norm Coleman’s decision to contest the election in court means that a three-judge panel will likely spend weeks scrutinizing the details of the election and ensuing statewide recount that determined Al Franken won by 225 votes. While the extended time-frame is relatively good news for Coleman — in that it means his electoral prospects remain alive — it could also allow time for more details to emerge in a pair of lawsuits that surfaced late in the campaign.

As Paul Demko reports, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota announced it had written to the FBI and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics urging the bodies to investigate allegations that a wealthy Coleman donor, Nasser Kazeminy, fraudulently funneled money to the senator through his wife’s job. Via City Hall Scoop we learn of Sen. [...]