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Labor Department officials said they have no record that Freeman filed a 2006 disclosure form that requires union officers to reveal payments to entities in which a spouse has an interest.
The officials said Freeman filed the 2007 form more than four months after the deadline, on July 17, about a week after The Times raised questions about the payments to Lotus Seven.
He also did not identify his wife on the financial reports as the owner of the firm.
Freeman said Lotus Seven has produced 10 videos that promote the local's work and have been shown on lease-access cable channels. He said that the company won the contract through a competitive bidding process and that his wife did not personally profit from the payments to her company.
"She only gets reimbursements," Freeman said. "She does not profit at all."
Freeman said Lotus Seven had other paying clients, but he declined to provide their names or respond to questions about whether the firm received more payments from the union this year.
Pilar Planells, who also uses the stage name Pilar Sharai, declined to be interviewed. In a letter to The Times, she said of the video contract: "Any money that was left over after paying staff and expenses went back into the company."
Los Angeles city officials said Lotus Seven does not have a business license for the couple's Studio City address. No other address for the firm could be found, nor could a phone listing.
Freeman said that a union committee solicited bids before awarding the contract. The local did not respond to questions about the bidding process.
"At one time it was on our website, I do remember that," Freeman said of efforts to advertise for bids. "And then that was it, I mean, and the word goes out. . . . I stayed away from it."
Two losing bidders for the video contract, Freeman said, were Grand Ma's Watching Productions, whose incorporation papers list former union employee Brian Cheatham as chief financial officer, and The Filming Inc.
The two entities still received money from the union, according to the local's Labor Department reports.
Last year, the local paid about $147,000 to Grand Ma's Watching for other video work, Freeman said. It paid the company about $72,000 in 2006 for consulting. Calls to Grand Ma's Watching, which produces music and awards show videos, were not returned.
The Filming was paid nearly $106,000 by the union, but Freeman said he had no information about the entity or the work it performed.
"I would suggest you track them down," he said.
The union's financial report forms describe $82,000 of the payments to The Filming as a contribution to a nonprofit organization; the other $23,650 was reported as advertising and promotional expenses for the golf tournament.
No state incorporation record or IRS nonprofit listing for The Filming could be found, and the Los Angeles address given for it on the union's financial report could not be located. L.A. city officials said no business license has been issued for a company of that name at such an address.
Day-care contract
Carmen Planells, Freeman's mother-in-law, provides day care at her Los Angeles home. Her business had been receiving more than $90,000 annually for the past several years from the training center that Freeman founded as a separate nonprofit and chairs, according to IRS filings and interviews. Freeman's wife and brother-in-law, Hernando Planells Jr., are listed in state documents as officers in the mother-in-law's business.
Freeman said the day-care contract was awarded to Carmen Planells several years before his 2006 marriage to her daughter. The state birth registry shows that Freeman and Pilar Planells are the parents of a daughter born in 2001.
The officials said Freeman filed the 2007 form more than four months after the deadline, on July 17, about a week after The Times raised questions about the payments to Lotus Seven.
He also did not identify his wife on the financial reports as the owner of the firm.
Freeman said Lotus Seven has produced 10 videos that promote the local's work and have been shown on lease-access cable channels. He said that the company won the contract through a competitive bidding process and that his wife did not personally profit from the payments to her company.
"She only gets reimbursements," Freeman said. "She does not profit at all."
Freeman said Lotus Seven had other paying clients, but he declined to provide their names or respond to questions about whether the firm received more payments from the union this year.
Pilar Planells, who also uses the stage name Pilar Sharai, declined to be interviewed. In a letter to The Times, she said of the video contract: "Any money that was left over after paying staff and expenses went back into the company."
Los Angeles city officials said Lotus Seven does not have a business license for the couple's Studio City address. No other address for the firm could be found, nor could a phone listing.
Freeman said that a union committee solicited bids before awarding the contract. The local did not respond to questions about the bidding process.
"At one time it was on our website, I do remember that," Freeman said of efforts to advertise for bids. "And then that was it, I mean, and the word goes out. . . . I stayed away from it."
Two losing bidders for the video contract, Freeman said, were Grand Ma's Watching Productions, whose incorporation papers list former union employee Brian Cheatham as chief financial officer, and The Filming Inc.
The two entities still received money from the union, according to the local's Labor Department reports.
Last year, the local paid about $147,000 to Grand Ma's Watching for other video work, Freeman said. It paid the company about $72,000 in 2006 for consulting. Calls to Grand Ma's Watching, which produces music and awards show videos, were not returned.
The Filming was paid nearly $106,000 by the union, but Freeman said he had no information about the entity or the work it performed.
"I would suggest you track them down," he said.
The union's financial report forms describe $82,000 of the payments to The Filming as a contribution to a nonprofit organization; the other $23,650 was reported as advertising and promotional expenses for the golf tournament.
No state incorporation record or IRS nonprofit listing for The Filming could be found, and the Los Angeles address given for it on the union's financial report could not be located. L.A. city officials said no business license has been issued for a company of that name at such an address.
Day-care contract
Carmen Planells, Freeman's mother-in-law, provides day care at her Los Angeles home. Her business had been receiving more than $90,000 annually for the past several years from the training center that Freeman founded as a separate nonprofit and chairs, according to IRS filings and interviews. Freeman's wife and brother-in-law, Hernando Planells Jr., are listed in state documents as officers in the mother-in-law's business.
Freeman said the day-care contract was awarded to Carmen Planells several years before his 2006 marriage to her daughter. The state birth registry shows that Freeman and Pilar Planells are the parents of a daughter born in 2001.
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