(Bloomberg) ? Mark Belnick told jurors at his criminal trial that he had ?no reason to disbelieve? the former finance chief of Tyco International Ltd. when he assured Belnick he was eligible for no-interest company loans.

Belnick, 57, Tyco?s former general counsel, is charged with falsifying business records for failing to record almost $15 million in company loans on forms used to prepare government filings.

He said former chief financial officer Mark Swartz told him he qualified for the loans under a program set up to aid employees who moved from New Hampshire to New York.

?He told me that?s how it worked at Tyco,? said Belnick. ?I had no reason to disbelieve him.?

Belnick says he wasn?t required to disclose the loans. The forms he?s charged with falsifying asked if he owed the company more than $60,000, other than debt incurred ?in the ordinary course? of Tyco?s business. Prosecutors say Belnick borrowed almost $15 million from Tyco to buy a co-op apartment in New York and a $10 million home in Park City, Uah. Tyco had no offices in Utah. He?s also charged with stock fraud and grand larceny. The government says a $17 million bonus he got in 2000 was stolen from the company.

Belnick claims he earned the bonus for shepherding Tyco through an accounting investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Assistant District Attorney John Moscow, the lead prosecutor in the case, sought to show during his cross-examination of Belnick that the loans were not part of Tyco?s normal business and should have been reported.

Belnick said after he agreed to join Tyco in 1998, Swartz sent him a copy of a company relocation plan covering employees who moved from the Exeter, New Hampshire, office to New York. At the time, Belnick lived in the New York suburbs and wanted to move to Manhattan, he testified. Swartz told him the document was a ?template? that would be changed to fit individual employees, Belnick said.

Moscow asked Belnick if he thought the $10 million pay package he got from former Chief Executive L. Dennis Kozlowski when he was hired could be called ?huge.?

?You can call it `huge?; you can call it `large?; you can call it `a lot,? said Belnick. ?I thought it was extremely generous and that it was a lot of money.? If he?s convicted, Belnick faces up to 25 years in prison.

The trial of Kozlowski and Swartz on charges they stole $170 million in unauthorised compensation from Tyco ended abruptly after six months, when a juror reported receiving threats. State Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus declared a mistrial in April. A retrial is scheduled for January. Tyco, the world?s biggest maker of security systems, is based in Bermuda and run from offices in West Windsor, New Jersey.