Prosecutor says Kozlowski, Swartz stole with 'both fists'
NEW YORK -- Two former executives of Tyco International are on trial not over their wealth, but because they stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the company ''with both fists," a prosecutor said yesterday.
''They are here because they thought they were above the law, that rules that applied to others didn't apply to them," Assistant District Attorney Ann Donnelly told the jury in summations yesterday. ''They are here because they stole huge amounts of money."
The defendants, L. Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco's former chief executive, and Mark H. Swartz, the former chief financial officer, are accused of looting Tyco of $600 million to finance baronial lifestyles and fund pet investments.
The prosecutor defended using a videotape of an $18 million Manhattan apartment Tyco owned -- with $15 million worth of furnishings -- saying it was proper to illustrate how Kozlowski spent company funds.
A $6,000 shower curtain in the apartment was only one of the extravagances funded from Tyco's coffers, Donnelly said. She said Kozlowski also bought $30,000 worth of opera glasses.
Donnelly also defended the prosecution's use of a videotape of the Roman-themed $2.1 million 40th-birthday party Kozlowski threw for his wife on the Italian island of Sardinia in June 2001. Donnelly called the tape ''a window" into how the defendants saw their relationship to Tyco.
''They looked at Tyco as a purely personal source of money whenever they wanted it," she said.
Kozlowski lawyer Stephen Kaufman had called both tapes and testimony about parties, yachts, and mistresses ''irrelevant" and designed to incite ''prejudice" in the jurors against the defendants.
Donnelly conceded that ''there's nothing wrong with" the defendants' extravagant lifestyles.
''But you have to pay for it," she said. ''Don't make someone else pay for it for you."
Kozlowski, 57, and Swartz, 43, are accused of stealing $170 million by taking unauthorized bonuses and by abusing company loan programs. They allegedly netted another $430 million by manipulating Tyco stock prices from 1995 through 2002.
