ABSOLUTELY, YOUR HONOR, IT WAS A LEGITIMATE BUSINESS EXPENSE….Allan Sloan writes about the birthday party that former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski threw for his wife a few years ago on the Italian island of Sardinia:
The Roman-themed party featured scantily clad men cavorting lubriciously with women in diaphanous gowns, an oiled male model gyrating on a pedestal, enough flaming torches to burn entire cities and Jimmy Buffett singing ?Brown-Eyed Girl? and other favorites for a one-night fee of $250,000. Mercifully, the judge barred shots of the ice sculpture of Michelangelo?s ?David? urinating vodka, and suppressed footage of sparklers sizzling atop the protruding portions of a birthday cake shaped like a woman.
The tab for the party, held in June 2001, was petty cash in the scheme of things. Kozlowski stuck Tyco with a bill for slightly more than $1 million, a minuscule part of the $600 million prosecutors charge him and his codefendant with looting from the company.
And here’s the punch line: “Kozlowski?s lawyers say it was a legitimate corporate expense.”
Sounds legitimate to me.
