The days of “options backdating” prosecutions and SEC enforcement actions are long past. As far back as 2009, the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office, which brought the vast majority of those cases, stated that it had brought its final options backdating case. For years, however, there has been one notable case sitting on the back burner: the case against former Comverse Technology Inc. CEO Jacob “Kobi” Alexander.
In 2006, Comverse became a focus in prosecutors’ and regulators’ options backdating sweep. Shortly before being indicted, Alexander and his family moved to Namibia, which at the time had had no extradition treaty with the U.S. For the last 10 years, Alexander has remained in Namibia, making the best of his exile by living in an upscale gated community on the grounds of the Windhoek Country Club and doing things such as paying for 200 guests to fly in from New York and Israel for his son’s Bar Mitzvah.
