(Bloomberg) ? Minutes of directors? meetings at Tyco International Ltd. in 2000 give different accounts of who made a report on former chief executive L. Dennis Kozlowski?s compensation, according to documents shown the jury at his fraud trial.

Minutes of a board meeting in October 2000 said director W. Peter Slusser reported on pay for Kozlowski and finance chief Mark Swartz. Compensation committee minutes said director Philip Hampton gave the report. Hampton is a key to the defence because witnesses have said Kozlowski and Swartz told them Hampton authorised millions of dollars in forgiven loans.

Slusser made the presentation ?because Mr. Hampton couldn?t be there to do it,? director James Pasman testified today at the securities fraud and larceny trial of Kozlowski and Swartz. Hampton was suffering from cancer at the time and died in 2001. ?I presume it was his health? that kept Hampton from making the report, Pasman told Kozlowski lawyer James DeVita.

Prosecutors say Kozlowski, 58, and Swartz, 44, gave themselves and others $150 million in unauthorised compensation, including cash bonuses and forgiveness of company loans, without getting approval of the board?s compensation committee. They are being retried in New York after their first case ended in a mistrial in April.

The defence claims that Kozlowski and Swartz made no effort to hide their actions from the board or company auditors. ?The procedure on any sizeable benefit such as those described would typically be memorialised in a resolution,? Pasman, a government witness, testified yesterday on direct examination. Those resolutions are made part of the committee?s minutes.

The defence wants to show that minutes of the meetings were incomplete, inaccurate and, in the case of the October 2000 compensation committee gathering, prepared before the meeting actually took place. Hampton was chairman of the compensation committee.

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. Pasman served on the board from 1997 to 2002.

Tyco shares have more than doubled since Kozlowski was indicted.