Mark Belnick, Tyco International’s former top lawyer, was overcome with joy yesterday when he was acquitted of charges that he took $32 million in unauthorized loans and bonuses from the company.
Belnick was found not guilty of grand larceny, falsifying business records and defrauding Tyco investors – charges that could have landed him in jail for up to 25 years.
“We are happy, relieved, but not surprised,” said Belnick’s attorney, Reid Weingarten. “We always believed we represented an innocent man and we were confident that when a fair-minded jury heard the evidence, Mark Belnick would be fine.”
“I want to take a deep breath and go home and be with my wife and family,” Belnick told reporters outside Manhattan State Supreme Court.
The verdict is a blow to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which sought to prove Belnick was paid $17 million by former CEO Dennis Kozlowski to cover up fraud at Tyco. Belnick said the bonus was for navigating Tyco through a Securities and Exchange Commission accounting probe.
Belnick also was found not guilty of charges that he committed stock fraud and falsified business records by failing to report $14 million in loans, $10 million of which he used to buy a home in Utah.
It is the second time prosecutors have failed to nail a Tyco official.
A six-month trial of Kozlowski and former CFO Mark Schwartz ended in mistrial in April. Kozlowski and Schwartz were accused of looting the company of $600 million through unauthorized compensation and stock fraud. A retrial is scheduled for January.
“It’s a sobering verdict for the D.A.’s office because the defenses raised by Belnick mirror those raised by Kozlowski and Schwartz in the first Tyco trial,” said former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, now head of the white-collar defense practice at McCarter & English.