Lawyers  for Tyco International expressed concerns about the company's accounting in their email messages, US media reports said yesterday.

Emails obtained by prosecutors and disclosed in the Wall Street Journal show that Tyco's former outside lawyers questioned spending by the group's former chairman, Mr Dennis Kozlowski.

"There are payments to a woman whom the folks in finance describe to be Dennis's girlfriend," attorney Mr Lewis Liman wrote in an email to Tyco's former general counsel Mark Belnick. In the email quoted by the paper, Mr Liman of the Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering law firm, called the payments "an embarrassing fact".

Tyco's accounting problems go back to 2000 and came to light earlier this year. In October, the group announced a quarterly loss of €1.75 billion (€1.68 billion), hurt by a €2.68 billion writedown for restructuring and other charges. - (AFP)