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Ex-Comverse CEO Alexander Nabbed in Namibia
TMCnet Executive Editor
The fugitive chief executive of Comverse Technology (News - Alert), who resigned back in May amid allegations of fraud and then ran from authorities, has been arrested in the African
republic of
Namibia after an international manhunt, according to press reports.
The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Jacob “Kobi” Alexander will be extradited shortly to face multiple criminal charges including fraud in a federal court in
New York. Prior to his arrest in Namibia, Alexander, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Israel, was believed to be in Sri Lanka after authorities tracked down his whereabouts tracing his Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls.
While Comverse is one of dozens of companies under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for back-dating stock option grants, the circumstances surrounding this case are extraordinary. Alexander, along with former Chief Financial Officer David Kreinberg, is accused of creating a slush fund of backdated options granted to fictitious employees.
Since authorities first charged the former Comverse officials, Kreinberg and former senior general counsel William Sorin have surrendered and were released on $1 million bond. But given Alexander’s flight risk, no bond is expected.
Reuters reported Alexander faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if convicted of securities fraud, the most serious of the charges against him.
In the mean time, the company has continued to try to rebuild its standing in the financial community and build out its network-based communications systems business, buying Netonomy, a customer self-service software vendor, in September and Netcentrex (News - Alert), a Triple Play (News - Alert) solutions company, earlier this year.
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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.
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