Tyco Ex-Exec Says Auditor OKd Bonuses

A former Tyco International Ltd. executive told jurors PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Richard Scalzo was “comfortable” with how the company accounted for bonuses to top officials that prosecutors say were stolen funds.

Mark Foley, who was Tyco’s senior vice president of finance, testified that Scalzo and other Pricewaterhouse employees working on Tyco audits were informed of bonus payments that prosecutors said were buried in large corporate transactions, such as the spinoff of TyCom Ltd. in 2000.

“It was an unusual treatment of a transaction, but they indicated they were comfortable with the way it was handled,” Foley testified in New York state court.

Scalzo was barred in August from auditing public companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of recklessly issuing fraudulent audits of Tyco after ignoring evidence that executives were looting the company. He accepted the penalty to settle the civil action without admitting or denying wrongdoing in his work at Tyco.