An attorney whose client is suing the Air America radio network said yesterday that the May litigation is part of a larger attempt by the client, an owner of radio stations, to collect more than $1.5 million it says it is owed.

The attorney, Randy Mastro, with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, represents MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting, one of the largest minority-owned broadcasting companies in the country. Mr. Mastro served as a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration.

The lawsuit filed by MultiCultural in May charges that the transfer of ownership of Air America to Piquant LLC from Progress Media in May 2004 was illegal and was intended only to maintain the network’s assets while abandoning its creditors.

“It’s called a fraudulent conveyance – same people, same assets, they are just trying to avoid their liabilities,” Mr. Mastro said yesterday. “A company that has debts can’t just change its name, assume all the assets, and refuse to pay its liabilities. … The same individuals who contacted us and described themselves as Piquant were also part of the management and ownership of Air America.”

Last November, a court ordered Air America to pay MultiCultural more than $255,000, and the suit filed in May seeks to claim that money.

A spokeswoman for Piquant, Jaime Horn, released the following statement: “At this time we will not comment on this or any litigation resulting from the action of Evan Cohen and Progress Media. If Mr. Mastro wants to argue his case in the press, he is welcome to. We prefer to wait for the more appropriate venue – a court of law.” Evan Montvel Cohen was director of the liberal radio network and a principal of Progress Media.

The city’s Department of Investigation, in conjunction with the state attorney general’s office, is probing the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx for allegations of “inappropriate transactions” that include $875,000 that Gloria Wise transferred to Air America and Mr. Cohen, in what officials of Gloria Wise have described as loans.

MultiCultural cited the Gloria Wise transfers in its complaint, filed with state Supreme Court in Manhattan. Mr. Mastro said it was included because “it shows a pattern by Air America/Piquant – a pattern of attempts under the guise of a reorganization to avoid its creditors.”

Piquant has agreed to pay Gloria Wise $875,000 into an attorney-controlled escrow account and has made one $50,000 payment.

Through a spokeswoman from Rubenstein Public Relations, Martta Rose, Gloria Wise officials indicated they would prefer to receive the whole sum back quickly. “Gloria Wise is in continuing discussions with Air America to secure repayment of the loan to the club on a schedule that is acceptable to all,” the statement said.

Officials at Air America and its biggest star, the political pundit Al Franken, have blamed Mr. Cohen for the transactions with the Bronx nonprofit organization.

In “Left of the Dial,” a documentary of the launch and the first turbulent months of Air America that was shown on HBO in March, Mr. Cohen first appears as an upbeat, hardworking businessman with a closely shaved beard and a slight paunch, which fits awkwardly into a series of expensive-looking suits. He is often pictured talking into an earpiece that allows him to use his cell phone while driving.

As Air America runs into financial trouble, however, and is bounced off the air by stations in Los Angeles and Chicago – which were owned by Multicultural – the filmmakers, Patrick Farrelly and Kate O’Callaghan, attribute the network’s problems to Mr. Cohen’s management.

Board members of Gloria Wise have described several ways in which Mr. Cohen, who was the club’s director of development, purportedly orchestrated the $875,000 in transfers. Besides loans to the start-up radio network, these included two loans for $35,000 to Mr. Cohen that, board members said, were meant to help him pay for medical expenses for himself and his “gravely ill father.”

But a clipping from the Pacific Daily News, a Guam newspaper, shows that Mr. Cohen’s father, Marvin Montvel-Cohen, died in February 1991, more than a decade before Evan Cohen’s pleas for money.

Marvin Montvel-Cohen was a New York City native who moved to Guam in the 1960s and worked as a professor of anthropology at the University of Guam.

Mr. Cohen has not responded to email messages from The New York Sun seeking his comments.