A lawsuit filed yesterday afternoon against Michael Jackson claims he squandered money on Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and his own mother, among others.

I told you several weeks ago that Marc Schaffel, Jackson’s videographer and business partner from 2000 to 2003, was owed millions of dollars by the singer. For a while Schaffel was receiving regular payments, but Michael’s brother Randy put a stop to that and forced Schaffel’s hand.

Now Schaffel has sued Michael for $3 million. His lawsuit details a lot of Jackson’s financial dealings. Schaffel confirms, for example, a story broken in this column last year that Michael gave Marlon Brando $1 million to appear at his 30th anniversary concert back on Sept. 7, 2001 at Madison Square Garden. Brando told Jackson he was broke – which, of course, was a lie borne out by Brando’s will. The corpulent Oscar winner was worth millions, as it turned out.

I also told Fox News viewers that Michael regularly gave Elizabeth Taylor expensive gifts even when he couldn’t afford them. In March 2003, Jackson ponied up a $600,000 necklace for Liz so she’d sign a release and allow herself to be in Michael’s home videos broadcast on television.

In both cases, and in many others, Schaffel says Jackson borrowed the money from him because he was either too scared to ask his accountants or simply didn’t have the funds readily available. In one case, Schaffel says Michael borrowed $250,000 for his mother Katherine Jackson, who demanded a fee essentially for appearing on another show about her son.

Schaffel’s lawsuit, which has been in the works for some time, details Jackson’s peculiar ways of dealing with money. Not named directly in the suit is a Beverly Hills firm called Royalty Advance Funding. I reported in this column in July 2001 that Jackson had borrowed huge sums from the firm’s owner Parviz Omidvar against his own songwriting catalogue, which contains songs like “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.”

Schaffel says in his suit that he loaned Michael $170,000 so Jackson could pay the interest on a $2 million loan drawn upon a $10 million line of credit that Schaffel had arranged with a third party. The third party would be Omidvar, whom had to lend Jackson the money so he could pay for a diamond encrusted watch he “borrowed” from Beverly Hills jeweler David Orgell and tried to return in poor condition.

The loans, lines of credit and extravagant gifts are only part of Schaffel’s suit. He also chronicles Jackson’s wild spending habits, claiming that he loaned him amounts from $50,000 to $100,000 so that Jackson could go shopping in various locations. Scahffel also claims that he laid out hundreds of thousands of dollars after Neverland was raided by police in November 2003. Jackson decided to stay in Las Vegas rather than return home. Schaffel says he paid those bills.

Of course, what Schaffel doesn’t say is that his enormous income was earned largely from making adult movies. Nevertheless, that doesn’t negate his claims if he’s telling the truth. And from what I’m told by Jackson’s financial insiders, most of Schaffel’s claims are documented and accurate. At one point, he thought he’d reached a settlement with Jackson’s inner circle, only to have that agreement trashed by Randy Jackson.