Ethics Outline: Tyco International

Ethics Paper Outline: Dennis Kozolwski In 1975, I, Dennis Kozlowksi, went to work for a company called Tyco International. I started as any other young auditor the company hired, at the bottom. After a few years of modest work I began to want more from the company. As my knowledge of the internal workings of the company grew so did my greed. I grew to want more and more from Tyco so I began to work hard to receive promotions. After 14 years, I was promoted to the president and chief operating officer of the company. Here I paid my due diligence knowing that I would eventually run this company. Then, three years later I was named CEO of a rapidly growing company. It was here where my greed was growing at an uncontrollable rate and the downfall
I knew with the hundreds of acquisitions Tyco had made under my tenure it would be almost impossible to keep track of all the transactions. To make matters worse, Tyco used complex accounting methods to hide where most of the money was going. This irregular accounting style allowed the company to show the market that we were continuing to grow even when Tyco was in debt.
When the party confetti had settled, and I could no longer find anything new to buy, I had stolen more than $100 million from Tyco. I increased my salary from $1 million in 1993 to over $300 million in 2001. I stole $106 million of the stockholders’ money to claim it as my own donation to receive a tax benefit. (SEC, 2002)
I may be a smart man but I could not have created this scandal without a few partners. Mark Schwartz, the CFO at the time and on the board of directors, also participated in the taking out loans scandal. In the end, Schwartz was also found to be guilty of falsifying journal entries to show that he never borrowed that money. Another partner in this unfortunate scandal was Mark Belnick. Belnick was the general counsel member who also played a part in taking loans and recording them as bonuses. By the end of our time as top executives at Tyco we had stolen more than $600 million. (Anderson,
With the money that I had stolen, I bought artwork worth $13 million but I failed to pay any taxes. By trying to evade these taxes I unknowingly ruined my life. This lead to an investigation on where I had gotten all of the money I had stolen. From here the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took over the investigation. They issued a major internal audit which was used to trace back the $600 million to the executives. Everything that I had worked for good and bad at Tyco came to an end and all because I thought that I was immortal at CEO of a corrupt company. (Tyco,