He begged. He groveled. And for the very first time, he called himself a crook.
Imprisoned Tyco marauder Dennis Kozlowski put on an embarrassing display of a different kind of greed — a ravening yearning to be sprung — during his failed bid before a state parole board this month, according to a newly-released transcript.
“I am asking you for your mercy,” Kozlowski, the pillaging ex-CEO of the home security and electronics conglomerate, told the board during the April 4 hearing.
“In fact, I am not too proud to beg you for your mercy here today. I am extremely sorry for what I have done.”
David McGlynn
Ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski begged a parole board for mercy and his release, according to a transcript of the hearing released yesterday. His bid was denied.
The parole board would almost immediately deny his bid, averring in a written decision last Thursday that his release would “not be compatible with the welfare of society at large... and undermine respect for the law.”
But after spending six years in prison — “I’m on my 79th month,” he told a trio of parole commissioners — Kozlowski was more than ready to at least figuratively rip the knees of his bright orange correctional services jumpsuit.
“Back when I was running Tyco, I was living in a CEO-type bubble,” he told the panel.
Actually, he was living in a 13-room Park Avenue apartment festooned with paintings by Monet and Renoir plus a $6,000 golden shower curtain — for the maid’s bathroom — with additional homes in Nantucket and Boca Raton, all purchased with looted stockholder cash.
“I had a strong sense of entitlement at that time,” he told the panel. “And I had a sense of greed. And in doing so, I stole money from Tyco, and I stole a lot of money.”
He and ex-CFO Mark Swartz were sentenced in 2005 for thefts of hundreds of millions of dollars while committing securities frauds that decimated Tyco’s stock values, additionally rooking shareholders out of an estimated $76 million.
“I’m very sorry that I did that,” he said, adding “I knew I was doing something wrong at some level when I did it.”
Kozlowski and Swartz were sent away to serve matching 8 1/3 to 25-year sentences after a Manhattan jury convicted them, in addition to securities fraud, of grand larceny and falsifying business records.
At the time, they were still insisting, through their lawyers, that they had only taken what they were entitled to.
“My conscience told me one thing, but my sense of entitlement allowed me to rationalize what I did,” he added.
“After I was in prison for a bit and thinking hard about what I did, I recognized my rationalizations were just that — rationalizations,” the 65-year-old felon said. “I stole from the company,” he said.
Nothing like 79 months in prison to burst one’s CEO-type bubble.
The Kozlowski trial made headlines after prosecutors showed the jury videos of a $2 million 2001 birthday party he threw on the island of Sardinia.
Kozlowski — who tells the panel he had rejected a plea deal for a two-to-six year prison stretch — has been on five-day work release since January and is currently held in Lincoln Correctional Facility in upper Manhattan.
He can try again for parole in the fall of 2013.
litaliano@nypost.com
Dennis Kozlowski, Kozlowski, Tyco, parole board, prison, prison
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