(Bloomberg) ? Bermuda-based Tyco International Ltd.'s former treasurer testified that former chief executive officer L. Dennis Kozlowski never asked him to hide anything from company directors or auditors.

Testifying at the fraud and larceny trial of Kozlowski and his onetime finance chief Mark Swartz, ex-treasurer Michael A. Robinson said the two never asked him to conceal millions of dollars they had his department wire from company loan programs to pay for jewellery and their other personal expenses.

"Did Dennis ever ask you to lie to auditors?" Kozlowski's lawyer, Austin Campriello, asked Robinson today on cross- examination in a state court in New York. "No," said Robinson, who was Tyco's treasurer from 1998 to 2003.

"Did he ever ask you to lie to directors?" Campriello asked. "No," said Robinson, a government witness.

Prosecutors accuse Kozlowski, 58, and Swartz, 44, of abusing the loan programs to buy apartments, jewellery and artwork and to fund personal investments. The two are also accused of giving themselves and others $150 million in unapproved payments, some of them to forgive those same loans, and of defrauding shareholders. They are being retried after their first case ended in a mistrial in April.

Kozlowski and Swartz say the company loan programs weren't limited to their stated purposes, such as covering tax payments on grants of company stock, as the prosecution has asserted. The defence also claims that Kozlowski and Swartz made no effort to hide their actions from the board or company auditors.

"Did Mr. Swartz ever ask you to destroy any written communication he sent to you?" Swartz's lawyer, Michael Grudberg, asked Robinson on further cross-examination.

"No," Robinson said.

Among the transfer requests shown to the jury last week was one for $243,562 to be paid to jeweller Harry Winston Inc., and two others totalling more than $1.6 million to another jeweller, Martin A. Katz Co. All three payments were drawn from the program set up to help defray taxes due on Tyco shares, known as the Key Employee Loan Program.

In late 1999, after many of the disputed transfers had been made, an internal audit of Robinson's department showed "no significant findings," according to documents the defence showed to the jury yesterday. Robinson said all records of the treasury department were available to the auditors, including records of wire transfers.

"We did not prohibit them from looking at anything they wanted to," he said. According to the report presented in court, the auditors' criticism of the cash management system was that it was too easy for anyone to access and read the wire transfer requests. The report suggested placing them under lock and key.

Kozlowski, who presided over more than $64 billion of acquisitions in the last five years of his decade as chief executive, built Tyco into the world's biggest maker of electronic connectors, industrial valves, plastic hangers and security systems.

He and Swartz face 31 charges of grand larceny, conspiracy, falsifying business records and securities fraud. The most serious charge of grand larceny carries a maximum 25-year sentence.

Kozlowski resigned from Tyco in 2002 the day before he was charged with evading sales taxes on $13.2 million in art purchases. He is to be tried separately on those charges. Swartz left the company in September 2002.

Tyco shares have more than doubled since Kozlowski was indicted.