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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: October 23, 2006 |
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The U.S. has requested the extradition from Namibia of Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, accused in the United States of hatching a scheme to pocket millions of dollars by secretly manipulating stock options, the U.S. Embassy spokesman said Monday.
The request was submitted Friday, U.S. Embassy spokesman Ray Castillo said in Windhoek. No date was set for an extradition hearing for the former chief executive of voicemail-software maker Comverse Technology Inc.
Alexander was granted bail by a Namibian court earlier this month on condition that he hand in his passport, stay in the Windhoek district and report twice a week to an Interpol inspector.
Dennis Khama, a Namibian Ministry of Justice official who handles extradition issues, confirmed the U.S. request had been received and said the minister would first have to determine whether it complied with the country's extradition laws. If it does, the minister will then submit the request to a magistrate.
Alexander's lawyer, Richard Metcalfe, was out of the country and so unavailable for comment.
Alexander was arrested Sept. 26 in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, at the request of the FBI after at two-month manhunt. In an affidavit filed with a Namibian court, Alexander said he had entered the country lawfully in July and had been living here openly with his wife and three children.
Alexander, a 54-year-old Israeli citizen, also said he had plans for businesses and investments in this desert country.
It is alleged that from 1991 through 2005, Alexander exercised options and sold stocks worth approximately $150 million, making a $138 million profit, according to a U.S. criminal complaint. Of that, about $6.4 million was generated by backdating options.
The complaint accuses Alexander and two other former top Comverse executives of making stock options more lucrative by backdating their exercise price to a low point in the stock's value. Usually, a stock option's exercise price coincides with the market value at the time of a grant to give the recipient an incentive to drive the price higher.
In addition, the company awarded thousands of stock options to fictional employees, then secretly transferred the awards to an internal account under the name I.M. Fanton, which stood for phantom, U.S. court papers said. The scheme allowed Alexander to award those options to real "favored employees" and to himself without board of directors approval, the papers added.
Comverse Technology is headquartered in Woodbury, New York. |
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