He’s leaving a generous tip.
Jailed Tyco tycoon Dennis Kozlowski and the former-waitress wife he once lavished with a $2 million, Roman-themed birthday bash have reached a multimillion-dollar divorce agreement, their lawyers said yesterday.
Kozlowski, 61, signed off on the paperwork three weeks ago at the upstate Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, where he’s serving 81/3 to 25 years for fraud.
His soon-to-be-ex, Karen, penned the paperwork Tuesday in Florida.
“He was the love of her life,” said Alan Kluger, co-counsel for the 47-year-old ex-waitress, Kozlowski’s second wife.
“She first met him when Tyco was headquartered in Exeter, NH. He was a customer.
“She stood by him during his trial, she visits him in jail and she’ll keep visiting him.”
Karen, who snagged her big tipper and married him in Antigua in 2001, was seeking half the couple’s assets – including her share of a 15,000-square- foot Boca Raton mansion they bought for $19 million.
The mansion could fetch as much as $30 million when it’s sold, said a divorce lawyer for the man who was once one of America’s highest paid corporate executives.
“I know he cares for Karen. He wants her to be happy and well,” said Martin Haines III, who took the paperwork to Kozlowski in jail last month for signing.
“It has not been an acrimonious proceeding at all. It’s one of those proceedings that is governed by sadness, mostly. He’s in jail and he doesn’t expect her to wait for him.”
Haines said the pact would next need the approval of the Manhattan Supreme Court judge who’s been overseeing Kozlowski’s assets – a meeting is expected within two weeks, he said – and then be filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
The exact terms of the agreement are confidential.
In what became an iconic image of corporate excess, Kozlowski famously threw his wife a $2 million birthday bash complete with costumed gladiators and togas on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
The party featured a performance by singer Jimmy Buffet and his band, flown in at a cost of $250,000, according to testimony at his criminal trial.
Kozlowski and another former exec were convicted in 2005 of charges involving the misuse of some $600 million in Tyco funds to finance opulent lifestyles. Karen filed for divorce the following year.
An appeal of the 2005 verdict was turned down last November, but the Court of Appeals in Albany, the state’s highest court, has agreed to consider it, and arguments are set for Sept. 2, Kluger said. With AP