FBI wants help finding ex-CEO of Comverse

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Tuesday declared Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, former chief executive of Comverse Technology Inc., a fugitive and asked the public to help find him.

Alexander is wanted on criminal fraud charges related to an investigation into alleged stock option manipulation at software supplier Comverse, one of nearly 100 companies in a widening government probe.

Comverse’s former finance chief David Kreinberg and its general counsel William Sorin, charged with criminal fraud in the investigation, surrendered to FBI agents on August 9. Both were released on $1 million bond.

The New York office of the FBI said in a statement Tuesday that on July 31 an Interpol Red Notice was issued for Alexander, who has dual American and Israeli citizenship. It said that agents were actively seeking his arrest. Interpol is an international agency through which intelligence authorities from around the world can collaborate.

Alexander is wanted on charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud for his alleged role in the stock options scheme, the FBI said.

His lawyers could not be reached for comment.

The U.S. government is looking into the stock option grant practices of nearly 100 companies for any abuses such as intentional manipulation of grant dates.

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The Comverse case was the second leading to charges. Last month, authorities brought their first options manipulation case against three former officers of high tech group Brocade Communications Systems Inc..

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The Justice Department has said that it seized more than $45 million from two investment accounts in Alexander’s name and it claimed that the ex-chief executive was involved in recent months in “a money laundering scheme involving the secret transfer of more than $57 million to accounts in Israel.”

The government has accused the Comverse defendants of reaping millions of dollars in profits from 1998 to 2002 by altering the grant dates of stock option awards to boost gains available to themselves and favored employees.

The Justice Department has said Alexander and Kreinberg used fake names “to generate hundreds of thousands of backdated options, which they then parked in a secret slush fund designed to evade the requirements of Comverse’s stock option plans.”

All three former Comverse officers quit in May after the company said it was investigating past stock option grants.