Crooked Israeli firm's pre 7/7 access to tube tunnels

[TonyGosling]

‘If you see anything suspicious please tell a member of staff’

A report for the UK 911 Truth campaign presented by Tony Gosling in the Mahatma Gandhi Hall, Indian YMCA, Fitzroy Square London W1T 6AQ on Monday 19th March 2007.

Comverse Technology – www.cmvt.com
Wiretapping, phone billing and mobile phone voicemail software developers. An Israeli company now at the centre of $8bn fraud enquiry in New York. Comverse share six directors with a wider network of linked companies also under investigation. Comverse took over Hong Kong company Multivision Intelligence Surveillance Ltd. in January 2006 but Comverse directors didn’t file the financial information required by law. Delisted from NASDAQ and stock trading suspended on 1st February 2007 because of financial mismanagement and non-filing of essential accounting information along with Verint Systems who are now also NASDAQ delisted.

Verint Systems – www.verint.com
All activities of this business are directed by Comverse Technology who own 57% controlling stock. Two thirds of Verint’s business is security products used by law enforcement and intelligence services to intercept voice, video and email traffic, the other third is call centre monitoring and employee evaluation software. Approx 1000 employees worldwide. Awarded contract for all London Underground’s CCTV in September 2004 by privatised 'Metronet Rail' who, in turn, have a 30 year contract from the UK government to manage London Underground security. Privatisation was imposed against wishes of elected Greater London Authority (GLA) by Gordon Brown’s Treasury Department.
Verint CEO Daniel Bodner is a former senior Israeli army officer who gets $4m annual benefits (including salary). Verint currently being investigated by Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over proposed merger with Witness Systems Inc. for possible phone monitoring technology monopoly. Verint rumoured to be targeted by IBM for takeover.
‘Nextiva Transit’ is Verint’s networked hi-tech CCTV system now being installed on ‘London Underground platforms and remote portions of track’. The system is programmed to automatically ‘watch for people loitering on transit platforms or people wearing heavy coats on hot summer days’.
Verint spokesman Alan Roden was referring to London’s July 7th 2005 bombing claims when he told Michael Fickes, ‘video proved an effective investigation tool and highlights the value of networked video in mass transit systems’. An article in Government Security website went on to say that using CCTV images ‘London police had discovered who was responsible and arrested many, if not all, of the perpetrators who remained alive.’ Quotes and articles such as this misrepresent the historical record. No CCTV image of any of the four alleged bombers on the London Underground on 7th July 2005 has been disclosed, neither were there any perpetrator arrests, as all four suspects allegedly blew themselves up.

Comverse’s directors

Jacob ‘Kobi’ Alexander, chief executive
Target of FBI, Wall Street Journal and Securities & Exchange Commission fraud enquiry in New York, declared fugitive in August 2006. Wanted on 35 criminal counts including stock option backdating, conspiracy, securities fraud, money laundering and bribery. Arrested after 7 week manhunt in Namibia in September 2006. Travelling via. Israel he transferred $17m to Namibia, bought a luxury house and formed a new construction, tourism and agriculture company. Now building 200 low income homes for workers at the new ‘Langer Heinrich’ uranium mine. Alexander’s extradition hearing begins in Windhoek on April 25th 2007, he’s facing up to 20 years jail in New York. Known to be a close associate of former Chinese president Jiang Zmein.

David Kreinberg, chief financial officer
Turned state’s evidence, pleaded guilty and told New York FBI that Comverse CEO Alexander offered him financial inducements to take the rap for everything. CEO Jacob Alexander allegedly offered him $2m and he refused, offered him $5m and he still refused, then, according to Kreinberg, Alexander said “name your price”. To be sentenced February 23rd 2007.

William Sorin, company lawyer
Pleaded guilty. Paid $3.1 million fine at the end of 2006 as compensation for fraudulent activities. Permanent ban on acting as a company lawyer.

Conclusions
Roughly three million people a day use the London Underground network. Since privatisation, contracts are also shrouded in double walls of secrecy to protect both ‘national security’ and ‘commercial confidentiality’. But with that secrecy comes a caveat of absolute 100% trust and loyalty to the travelling public of London who use the tube network. Instead what we find is a company with 24 hour access to the entire tube network, run by a senior ex Israeli army officer, whose former employers are engaged in a largely covert war against Arabs for land and oil. Bodner's present employers are wanted in New York on 40 plus criminal counts, implicated in multi-million dollar fraud and conspiracy and facing several long jail sentences.
This report has been time-consuming and difficult because of the immense secrecy surrounding the security businesses involved. Though I have sent the story to the Evening Standard and the BBC for London it has not, to my knowledge, been reported. As a result tube staff & public are almost entirely unaware of the criminal nature of this firm entrusted with the safety of millions of Londoners.
The covenant of trust required by all those who use and work on the tube has been broken. For the safety of all Londoners contracts with Verint Systems must be immediately suspended by Metronet Rail, the GLA or the Government pending a transparent investigation into Verint and Comverse. Also control of the London Underground CCTV network must be wrested from those with close ties to the Israeli armed forces until the Middle East conflict is over.

References
http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=112636
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/business/24comverse.html
http://govtsecurity.com/mag/preventing_mass_transit/
http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2007/03/12/2408239.htm
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/060327/vrnt8-k.html
http://www.verint.com/corporate/releases_view.cfm?article_level1_categ ory_id=7&article_level1_id=724&pageno=1&year=2007

All of the preceding information can be verified on the internet. For further information please contact Tony Gosling 10-12 Picton Street, BRISTOL, BS6 5QA. 0117 944 6219 www.public-interest.co.uk & www.officialconfusion.com

See also the July 7th Truth campaign at www.julyseventh.co.uk
(this article was submitted for approval by the July Seventh campaign but subsequently rejected - it was also deleted by the moderators at www.arrse.co.uk)

[kookomula]

Is this right? Comverse owned Odigo where two Israeli based (?)employees allegedly received a two hour warning(s) prior to the attacks.

"The Internet address of the sender of the warning was reportedly given to the FBI. Two months later it was reported that the FBI was still investigating the matter. Since then there have been no further media reports about the Odigo warning of 9/11."

http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-Kobi-Alexander.html

[rodin]

On 7/7 Peter Power was 'working with a company of over 1000 people and if they're listening they'll know it'

Verint had 1200.

[conspiracy analyst]

which one would need to look at.

What about all the building companies responsible for refurbishing the Underground.

If there are hundreds of contractors then the newly privatised security firm is as secure as a boat which has a massive hole in it and is deep in windy waters.

A combination of lapsed security, with contractors meant that anyone from the 'intelligence services' could get up to their usual dirty tricks...

The bottom line though is the American connection. They ended up having all the neuralgic positions. Were there any US building companies like Bechtel on contracts with the London Underground?

[karlos]

[conspiracy analyst]

[quote="stelios69"]

[karlos]

[quote="conspirator"]

[TonyGosling]

Verint - Mexico & Malta - trouble times two

[TonyGosling]

The latest installment in the story of a crooked firm with 24 hour access to the deepest parts of the London Underground network. A story which I have personally sent to Private Eye, BBC For London radio (where I used to work), and The Evening Standard and I have spoken to each of their newsdesks. None of them will print or broadcast this story. Despite the fact that three million Londoners a day use the tube which this company has access to. So are there strings being pulled behind the scenes to stop the story getting out?



KOBI DODGES ANOTHER BULLET

By JANET WHITMAN
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04262007/business/kobi_dodges_another_bull et_business_janet_whitman.htm

Extradition hearing delayed.April 26, 2007 -- Alleged securities scamster Jacob "Kobi" Alexander won another month of freedom yesterday in Namibia, where he fled with his family to avoid prosecution and the possibility of 25 years behind bars.

Alexander's extradition hearing was set to begin yesterday in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, but got pushed back to June 8. Local media reports said the change was made at the request of prosecutors, who may be seeking a new judge.

It could be years before the fugitive former chief of Long Island's Comverse Technology is extradited back to the U.S. - if he's ever forced to return.

When he fled to the southwest Africa nation with his wife and their three kids in July, Alexander got a two-year work permit by pledging to invest $38 million in the country.

Since then, the Israeli tech entrepreneur, 54, has taken out full-page ads and erected billboards publicizing his commitment to his new found home.

His recent offer to fund a science and technology scholarship - announced just days before his extradition hearing was about to begin - has been put on hold, reportedly at his request.

The Brooklyn feds accused Alexander of masterminding a scheme to pocket millions in ill-gotten gains by manipulating stock options.

A Harvard-trained lawyer formerly employed by Comverse and the company's former head bean counter have both pleaded guilty in the case.

Alexander is accused of trying to bribe the bean counter with $5 million to take the fall for his alleged crimes.

[TonyGosling]

"Neo-conservative corporate intrigue?
In the meantime, the City of Montreal awarded the contract to refurbish the Montreal Metro’s security system, to Verint. This company appears to have close links to Israeli and U.S. intelligence interests (to the point where it is reportedly involved in large-scale surveillance of telephones in the U.S.). Verint's parent company, Comverse, was de-listed from the stock exchange in the wake of a massive financial scandal in which $57 million disappeared reportedly due to the CEO’s activities.
The City’s awarding of the said contract was made in the absence of any public consultation, and there appears to be no evidence of the city’s administration having ever called for tenders. Moreover, this same firm was ostensibly involved in providing “security” to the London Underground when the blasts occurred in that city on 7th of July 2005; and perhaps even more curiously, its CEO is an Israeli national, and former army officer there. "

[rodin]

[TonyGosling]

Former Comverse CEO wriggles as extradition from Namibian bolt-hole gets closer
http://www.telecomtv.com/news.asp?cd_id=7960&url=news.asp?cd_id=7960
by Martyn Warwick - 1/5/2007

Forward this story to a colleague

Remember Jacob “Kobi” Alexander? No? He’s the former CEO of the US telecoms software company Comverse Technologies, who has been on the lam since he vanished last year whilst “on holiday” in Israel. Wanted for options fraud and false accounting back home, he went on the run, failed to return to America and seemed to have disappeared into thin air until, a few weeks later, he was tracked to a Sri Lankan fishing village after foolishly making a Skype call to his daughter. He came very close to capture there, escaped by the skin of his teeth and was officially declared to be a fugitive from American justice. He even got his photo put up in US Post Offices.

A while later he re-materialised in Namibia in south-west Africa, and he’s been hanging-on in his adoptive country for a fair old while now as he wriggles to avoid extradition back to the good old US of A. He’s already won a couple of rounds against the US authorities and late last week scored another victory against the serried ranks of feds and G-Men who would very much like to see him back home to answer a few questions – something he’s remarkably keen to avoid.

This time around the ex-CEO won another delay in the extradition process that has been ongoing since, in October last, he arrived in the small and dusty Namibian capital of Windhoek and set himself up in some style (together with his wife and children) in a suite at the Windhoek Country Club and Casino.

That is where he was eventually tracked to earth, arrested and imprisoned pending extradition hearings. However, Alexander wasn’t in jail for long.

It is alleged that he transferred at least US$57 million out of the States as he laid his plans to leg-it, and he’s certainly been spending big on legal representation since Interpol got on his case. He didn’t get away with all his loot though. The US authorities found and seized $45 million salted away in various accounts around America.

The US has no formal extradition treaty with Namibia but is pushing as hard as it can to get Alexander removed to America to face 35 charges of money-laundering, securities fraud and other felonies in the New York borough of Brooklyn. Kobi, meanwhile is pushing back as hard as he can to make sure that will never happen.

US prosecutors say that between 1991 and last year, Kobi Alexander exercised options worth $150 million, on which he made $138 million profit. The also say at least $6.4 million of that was made by backdating options and also claim that Alexander devised a scheme through which thousands of stock options were awarded to fictional Comverse employees. The sums accruing to these fake recipients were later transferred to a single account in the name of I. M. Fantom. (i.e. I’m a phantom, Clever, eh? Investigators would never see through that one). In due course the money made its way into Kobi’s many and varied bank accounts.

In 2005, Alexander, who always courted publicity and fully lived up to the life-style and arrogant persona of the “celebrity CEO” crowed long and hard about his positioning in the annual Forbes list of the best paid CEOs in America’s 500 biggest companies. This showed that (extracurricular activities excepted), Mr. Alexander was on a salary of $13, 882,700. The median salary for US telecoms CEOs that year was a pitiful $1,700,000.

Back in Windhoek, Kobi remains out on bail of 10 million Namibian dollars after his heavyweight legal team accused the presiding magistrate, Sarel Jacobs, of bias against their client and demanded that he be withdrawn from the case. Th magistrate, who has served Windhoek unsullied for 32 years, then postponed the case, which is of course exactly what the ploy was intended to achieve. This is the third time that Alexander’s lawyers have manufactured a delay since he was arrested in September, 2006. His next appearance in court will be on June 8.

However, although Namibia had no direct and reciprocal extradition treaty with the US at the time Kobi magically appeared out of the desert, times have since changed. The president of Namibia, Hifikepunye Pohamba, soon after Alexander arrived in the country, signed an amendment to the Namibian Extradition Act of 1995 so that it now includes the US on the list of designated countries to which fugitives may be extradited. This is giving Kobi some sleepless nights and he has been casting about with increasing desperation to provide reasons for the Namibian government to allow him to stay.

He’s bought a big mansion close by the Windhoek Country Club (it only cost half a million bucks, small change by his standards but an immense sum in the little city) and has announced his sudden conversion to the cause of Namibia’s poor and dispossessed, a conversion to profound that he feels moved to invest “huge sums” in low-cost housing projects.

He has also, and repeatedly placed full-page advertising in the local press loudly proclaiming his love of the country and his intent to stay and invest in it. And he’s put the same message up on bill boards all over Windhoek.

However, and perhaps not surprisingly, none of the promises he has made have come to pass. Kobi’s lawyers say that’s because their client, according to one of the terms of his bail, must remain within the main governmental area of Windhoek and not venture beyond it on pain of imprisonment.

Others though point out that he constantly has teams of lawyers visiting him at his luxury pad, and so could do good works from home if he really wanted to. Thus, they suggest, his promises aren’t worth a great deal. What, poor but honest, put-upon, misunderstood, lost and victimised Kobi? Heaven forfend.

[TonyGosling]

The Verint Mafia are today being contracted by the Mexican government too - despite "past abuses".

[TonyGosling]

Quote:

The CCTV generation http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/critique.cfm?id=695002007 CARINA CHOCANO Sat 5 May 2007 FEW THINGS inspired more clammy dread in the average western democracy-dweller during the past century than the idea of electronic surveillance. But that was long before the barrier between the public and the private collapsed like an over-whipped soufflé; before camera phones and YouTube created legions of amateur stalkerazzi; before the area surrounding George Orwell's former London flat was outfitted with 32 CCTV cameras, the better to capture miscreants, brawlers and litterbugs in flagrante delicto. Something about being watched and judged is still profoundly upsetting to us, however, so it's no surprise to see a crop of films playing out this uneasiness. But the spying here seems to have more to do with the sort of ad hoc vigilante monitoring we subject one another to than any kind of institutional effort. What concerns them is not Big Brother, but the ways in which we've internalised voyeurism, prurience, violence, schadenfreude and self-policing. The fear these films express is of the spy we know, the person in the next room, at the next desk or in the same bed - the fear of the spies we are becoming. In Andrea Arnold's Cannes Jury Prize-winning film, Red Road, for instance, Kate Dickie plays a Glasgow CCTV operator whose job consists of monitoring the comings and goings of the people in a low-income neighbourhood. One day, she spots a man to whom she has a mysterious link on one of her screens, and she begins to insinuate herself into his life without telling him how they are connected. The same week as the film's recent American release, it was reported that surveillance cameras in 20 areas of Britain were being outfitted with loudspeakers to enable their operators to publicly shame whatever thug they might happen to catch on camera. The same month saw the US release of Disturbia, a gadget-obsessed Hitchcock knockoff described by one American reviewer as "Rear Window as retrofitted by Circuit City [the country's third largest electronics retailer]". Next month's release is Vacancy, in which Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale check into a motel whose rooms are outfitted with hidden cameras, all the better to produce home snuff movies with. In another new film, Alone With Her, a pasty Colin Hanks plays a young stalker who bugs the apartment of his pretty neighbour to insinuate himself into her life. The last time the subject of surveillance was this ubiquitous in the movies, Watergate was a current event, and the prevailing mood was one of profound mistrust of authority coupled with paranoid self-doubt. Films such as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (which starred Gene Hackman as an expert in electronic surveillance who lives in fear of being bugged himself, even though there's nothing to bug him about) and Brian de Palma's Blow Out (in which John Travolta plays a movie sound engineer who accidentally records a Chappaquiddick-inspired political assassination and finds himself enmeshed in a major political conspiracy disguised as a sex-crime spree) reflected a political moment characterised by clandestine operations and dirty tricks - a moment, as it happens, that's a lot like this one. Yet the new surveillance films are more reflective of the prurient present than of the political paranoia of three decades ago. Our civil liberties might have weakened, but one look at our enthusiastic embrace of electronic surveillance and public exposure and you would hardly know we cared. Of the recent voyeur films, only Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, which is set in 1985, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, deals with government surveillance. It is also, surprisingly, the most hopeful of the bunch. The story concerns an East German Stasi colonel named Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), who gets assigned to bug the apartment of a prominent, party-loyalist playwright and his actress girlfriend and find something they can send the writer away for. Wiesler soon realises that the playwright is being monitored because a top party official would like to have the writer's girlfriend for himself. At the same time, he is won over by the playwright and his friends' moral principles and aesthetic ideals. Eventually, Wiesler decides to protect them. The playwright, meanwhile, never suspects he's being monitored, nor that his girlfriend eventually succumbs to pressure and betrays him, but he takes precautions nonetheless. He harbours no illusions about the extent of his privacy or his rights. That's more than can be said for the characters in Michael Haneke's acclaimed Hidden, a middle-aged Parisian couple who receive mysterious video tapes letting them know they are being watched. Both have dirty consciences to go with their enlightened attitudes - a concept not lost on their benignly neglected young son. Whoever is stalking them is doing so with the express purpose of getting them - and possibly France - to confront past sins. What Hidden recognised is that guilt is usually present if you know where to look for it. What's being acted out in movies these days is not so much a fear of entrapment, though this is scary too, but a creeping fear of casual contact, or even intimacy, being held up for public dissection, or worse. We've become accustomed to having our every move, customer service phone chat and financial transaction recorded. Much scarier is the constant threat of exposure and ridicule by an otherwise innocuous peer who confuses vitriol with power, a special prosecutor, or simply an angry child who's got our number. • The Lives of Others is out now; Vacancy is released on 15 June; Disturbia on 7 September. This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/critique.cfm?id=695002007 Last updated: 05-May-07 01:06 BST

_________________
www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org
www.rethink911.org
www.patriotsquestion911.com
www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org
www.mediafor911truth.org
www.pilotsfor911truth.org
www.mp911truth.org
www.ae911truth.org
www.rl911truth.org
www.stj911.org
www.v911t.org
www.thisweek.org.uk
www.abolishwar.org.uk
www.elementary.org.uk
www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149
http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

[rodin]

[TonyGosling]

Metronet under strain as costs overrun
Vote: Would more cash bring a better service?

Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
Wednesday April 18, 2007
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2059888,00.html
Guardian Unlimited

A shareholder in the company charged with the £17bn upgrade of London's underground network has admitted that the operation's finances are "under increasing pressure".

Engineering firm Balfour Beatty, one of five shareholders in Metronet, said the consortium was coming under strain as it seeks a way out of paying a £750m bill for projected cost overruns. In annual results published this morning, another shareholder, WS Atkins said it would take an exceptional loss of £36m from its involvement in Metronet, which has suffered engineering delays and rocketing costs.

Balfour Beatty, a fellow shareholder in the Public Private Partnership contract, added this morning that the failure to reach a settlement with the underground had increased the likelihood of an extraordinary review of the deal.

A Metronet spokesman said: "Our preference would be for a negotiated settlement, as an extraordinary review would cost us and London Underground around £5 million each and distract management time from the day job of sorting out the underground." The other shareholders in Metronet are the Canadian conglomerate Bombardier, Thames Water and EdF.

Sir David Rowlands, permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, told MPs recently that the consortium, which spends around £1bn a year on enhancing nine of the capital's 12 tube lines, might need to refinance Metronet .

"It seems to me - and I am picking my words very carefully now - that Metronet on its current performance is in grave danger of having all of the shareholder funds wiped out and the shareholders may well have to recapitalise," he said.

"At that point, the shareholders would be at least as concerned as would the banks." Metronet has been criticised for doling out maintenance, repair and enhancement work to a closed shop of its five shareholders, but the company announced recently that it will open up some station overhauls to outside bidders.

The PPP was implemented in 2003 following a bitter war of words between the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, and the government - culminating in a high court case which the mayor lost. However, the capital's pre-eminent politician fared better in the PR battle.

Mr Livingstone said the arrangement was "fatally flawed" because it would compromise safety standards, while his transport commissioner at the time, Bob Kiley, accused Gordon Brown of being a "wizard of Oz" figure forcing through the partial privatisation. Ministers said London Underground could not be trusted to deliver the work on time and on budget following the troubled extension of the Jubilee Line.

Under the terms of the PPP, Metronet receives monthly instalments of taxpayers' money - £660m in 2005 – which are boosted by bonuses if targets are met but are whittled away by fines if there are delays and mishaps, such as the notorious failure to prepare stretches of track for a heatwave two years ago.

[mediadisbeliever]

Hell, my head is going to explode!

Great work!

[TonyGosling]

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/business_money/hundreds+of+tube+ jobs+to+be+streamlined/527892

The consortium renewing parts of London Underground is to axe hundreds of jobs under a "streamlining" plan.

Metronet, which has a contract to maintain and overhaul two-thirds of the Tube system, said 290 administrative and middle management jobs will be affected, as well as up to 200 temporary and agency posts.

The Rail Maritime and Transport union immediately warned it will be in dispute if any of its members' jobs are cut.

The consortium said the financial over-run on its contract was higher than the £750 million revealed last year, with some estimates putting the financial black hole as high as £1.2 billion.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT union, repeated his call for Tube maintenance to be brought back in-house, adding: "It is Metronet that needs to be sacked, not our members.

"Metronet's death throes should not be allowed to decimate the skilled maintenance workforce that will still be needed long after Metronet is buried."

[Mark Gobell]

ICTS featured on ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald, Monday 4th June

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news_detail_pa.html?sku=11808295805462601-H 9

Security scare 'exposed at airport'

03/06/07

A TV documentary is set to reveal what it describes as "serious security lapses" at a major British airport.

An undercover investigation by ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald found claimed "shocking failures" at Birmingham International Airport (BIA), including security officers sleeping while on duty and inadequate passenger searches.

The sixth-month investigation into the work of ICTS UK - one of the security firms used by BIA - also found planes left unguarded, poor staffing levels and luggage sent for extra checks ignored by officials, a statement from ITV said.

The programme - to be aired on Monday evening - sees one US Congress security expert call for flights from the airport to the US to be grounded after watching the footage.

Bennie G Thompson, chairman of the US Congress' Committee on Homeland Security, tells the programme: "There are so many things that have compromised that flight that I saw that nothing short of stopping it, and some sort of certification by some official that the standards are being met, should be the only reason that those flights should be allowed to start again."

ICTS UK is contracted by BIA to supply security staff to a number of airlines operating out of the airport, including the US-based Continental Airlines, which is featured in the programme.

The investigation - which also found that staff had not been properly briefed about terror threats and security alerts - was carried out by an employee, who has since resigned, plus an undercover ITV reporter employed at the time by the company.

In a statement, BIA said it had launched an inquiry following ITV's investigation and had taken action. It said the allegations related solely to ICTS UK, which provides "secondary screening to a limited number of airlines at BIA".

The statement continued: "We are confident that the actions already taken continue to assure the safety and security of passengers." The statement added that the airport was concerned that some security procedures may have been misunderstood.

In a statement issued to ITV for use on its programme, ICTS UK said it too had launched an investigation. "Upon receiving the Tonight with Trevor McDonald report, ICTS UK immediately initiated a full and thorough investigation into the limited material made available to us."


Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved.

[TonyGosling]

Associated Press
Nasdaq to Complete Verint Delisting
Associated Press 05.23.07, 3:07 PM ET
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/23/ap3752111.html

The Nasdaq Stock Market on Wednesday said it will delist software provider Verint Systems Inc. stock following a suspension.

Nasdaq suspended the stock Feb. 1 because it failed to comply with the Nasdaq continued listing requirement that mandates all filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission be made on a timely basis, and it has not traded since then.

Verint has delayed filing its quarterly financial reports because of an ongoing investigation into the stock-option practices of Comverse Technology Inc. (nasdaq: CMVT - news - people ), its approximately 57 percent stockholder.

Nasdaq will file a form with the SEC to complete the delisting, which will be effective 10 days later.

[TonyGosling]

CNBC Exclusive: The Search for Kobi Alexander
http://www.cnbc.com/id/19069014

CNBC Senior Correspondent Scott Cohn is on the trail of a controversial former corporate executive who prosecutors say has fled the country. Cohn and a producer have traveled to the African nation of Namibia, searching for former Comverse (CMVT) CEO Jacob "Kobi" Alexander. He's due to appear in a Namibian court this coming Friday. It's part of his fight to avoid extradition to the United States where an indictment charges him with engineering a long-running scheme to steal millions by improperly backdating stock options. Alexander was apprehended in Namibia last September, but is free on a $1.3 million bail bond.

Cohn has filed his first video dispatch from Namibia, and you can see it here only on CNBC.com. Future reports will appear on both CNBC-TV and CNBC.com, starting tomorrow.

While our attempt to talk to Alexander may, or may not be successful, we do expect to see him at his court appearance. We also will show you what he's been up to during his stay in Namibia. One of his activities is generating even more controversy. He's spending a lot of money, in what may be an attempt to persuade Namibian authorities to let him stay. A solar-powered, low-income housing project on the southwest African coast is one project we'll be showing you.

[TonyGosling]

Comverse Technology posts first quarter loss
http://www.reuters.com/article/technology-media-telco-SP/idUSBNG462120 070612

June 11 (Reuters) - Comverse Technology Inc. posted a loss from operations on increased expenses from its investigation of its accounting practices and said it would cut 6 percent of the jobs at its unit, Comverse Inc.

The software maker posted a loss from operations of $60.4 million for the latest first quarter, compared with an income from operations of $8.6 million in the same period a year ago.

Before items, including about $31.4 million in expenses related to the investigation, the company's adjusted income from operations fell to $7.9 million from $37.1 million, Comverse said in its statement.

Sales rose to $405.7 million from $369.2 million last year. Analysts were expecting the company to post sales of $429.9 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

In February, the company was delisted from the Nasdaq for failing to meet filing deadlines due to its ongoing review of its stock option accounting practices.

Separately, Verint Systems Inc., in which Comverse owns majority stake, said it posted first-quarter net income of $9.4 million, or 28 cents a share, excluding stock-based compensation and other expenses, on revenue of $101.3 million.

On that basais, analysts were expecting Verint to earn 37 cents a share, excluding items, on revenue of $102.4 million.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore)

(Editing by Anthony Kurian; Reuters Messaging: supantha.mukherjee.reuters.com@reuters.net; within U.S.+1 646 223 8780; outside U.S. +91 80 4135 5800)

[TonyGosling]

Comverse and its units have been unable to report their full financial statements for more than a year, after being caught backdating and spring-loading stock option grants, to name but one of its misdeeds.
Another may have been planting the three bombs on the London Underground that killed more than 40 people on 7th July 2007 (ed.)

Comverse reveals $60 million operating loss and 370 job losses
12.6.07 - By Shirley Yom-Tov and TheMarker
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/870153.html
Last night local time, Comverse Technologies (Nasdaq: CMVT) announced partial results for the first quarter of 2007. It couldn't announce all its results because the technology group hasn't finished straightening up its books after stock-option and other financial fiascos that require it to restate results going back ten years.

Anyway, Comverse Technologies, under new management now that the some of the old management has fled justice or been arrested, reported to a heavy operating loss of $60 million and 370 dismissals, or 6% of its workforce.

One reason for the heavy operating loss is the weighty $32.1 million cost for a legal committee that looked into the company's policies regarding stock options and accounting. The committee has finished its work, Comverse Technologies says, therefore this particular cost should all but vanish in the second quarter of 2007.

The company adds that it should resume publishing full financial statements by the end of January 2008.

Revenues increased 10% year over year against the parallel quarter to $405.7 million, Comverse Technologies said. Its backlog of orders dwindled during the January-March period by 4.2% to $759 million.

Subsidiary Comverse, which develops value-added and billing software for telcos, reported a 10% increase in revenues to $285 million.

Revenues from subsidiary Verint Systems (Nasdaq: VRNT - 57%) rose 15% against the corresponding quarter of 2006 to $101 million. Ulticom (Nasdaq: ULCM - 68%) reported a 27% dive in year over year revenues to $11.4 million.

StarHome sales weakened by 6% against the same period of 2006 to $9.7 million, Comverse Technologies said.

Comverse and its units have been unable to report their full financial statements for more than a year, after being caught backdating and spring-loading stock option grants, to name but one of its misdeeds. Company founder and leader Kobi Alexander fled justice to, it turned out, Namibia, where he is undergoing glacial extradition proceedings and is meanwhile basing himself as a local businessman and philanthropist.

Two other top ex-Comversites, former general counsel William Sorin and ex-chief financial officer David Kreinberg, have entered plea bargain agreements. Sorin was sentenced to 366 days in prison for his role in backdating stock options and was slammed with $52 million compensation to shareholders.

Kreinberg told U.S. attorneys that Alexander had tried to bribe him to take full responsibility for the troubles at Comverse. He refused.

The new CEO, Andre Dahan, explains that dismissals were necessary because of the drop in the company's backlog. The company has 6,100 employees, of whom 2,900 work in Israel.

[TonyGosling]

C'mon, lets make an investigative documentary and blast the racists to kingdom come!
http://www.en-gb.pledgebank.com/77enquiry

[TonyGosling]

Truly sycophantic piece trying to excuse the great Comverse fraudster - this is the way the NWO operate - using a weak and compliant press in a weasel attempt to cover some of the biggest crimes of the 21st century. They haven't spent hundreds of years using asons to disable Western criminal justice systems for nothing!

Who are the criminals?
Compared with the enormities of legal executive pay, options backdating is a side issue.
Laura Goldman 18 Jun 07 12:34
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000222483&fid= 980

Last week, I had the pleasure of spending the a day with the parents of former Comverse CEO Jacob (Kobi) Alexander. Zvi Alexander, Kobi’s father, had read my column “Backdating Buck”, and he wanted to thank me for defending Kobi.
Kobi Alexander is currently fighting extradition to the US from Namibia on fraud charges stemming from the illegal backdating of options.

When Kobi Alexander’s name was mentioned last week, people responded “Due to his stealing, Comverse employees are being laid off today.”

I started to wonder if Kobi Alexander was the only responsible party here or whether the toothless SEC and the lawmakers who enacted the ineffective laws were also partially responsible.

Shareholders in Comverse have been well rewarded. Since the company's IPO, they have gained $4 for every $1 invested. This does not include their stakes in the spin offs from Comverse. The shareholders in Verint have more than doubled their money since the IPO in 2002. Ulticom shareholders have lost 60% of their money. The Comverse subsidiary Starhome will eventually find a home on Nasdaq, and most likely earn a nice return for Comverse shareholders.

In measuring the performance of Alexander’s companies, we need to remember the telecom tsumani of the early 2000s. The shareholders of Global Crossing and Worldcom suffered bankruptcies even while Global Crossing’s founder Gary Winnick amassed a billion dollar fortune. Lucent survived but is barely hanging on.

Mr. Bumble in Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist said it best. “The law is a ass - a idiot.” Kobi Alexander built a company with over 6,000 employees and created value for his shareholders, but he is still considered a thief and could be on his way to jail. Others that have destroyed shareholder value or enjoyed over the top compensation are not in the government’s cross hairs.

At one time, Taro stock sold at more than $68. Dr. Barrie Levitt, CEO of Taro Pharmaceuticals, refused many offers to sell the company at significantly higher prices. Under his leadership, the company did not complete required financial filings, causing the NASDAQ to delist the stock. He was able to destroy shareholder value with impunity. Since he had no choice due to imminent bankruptcy, Levitt has finally agreed to sell at the rock bottom price of $7.75. Yet Dr. Levitt is not facing jail and is free to drink Mai Tais on the beach. Large shareholder Franklin Resources is not happy about it.

Despite Yahoo’s dismal performance on the stock market over the last three years and its 35% decline this year, CEO Terry Semel was paid over $100 million, including an award of 6.8 million stock options. This makes him one of America’s highest paid executives. Even though one third of the stockholders voted against this award, it is legal under the current laws.

Robert Nardelli, former CEO of Home Depot, walked away with a $210 million dollar severance package. In the six years that he was at the helm, the stock did not move. Michael Ovitz golden parachuted away from Disney after a year with a $140 million. Graef Crystal, well known executive compensation critic, entitled his piece on the subject, “Michael Ovitz Got Away with Murder … and I helped him”.

For the year 2001, Kobi Alexander earned total cash compensation of $9, 401,242 and was awarded 600,000 in stock options. In 2002, he earned $1,719,039 and was granted 600, 000 stock options. In 2003, he earned a total of $9,116,254 -$1,325, 720 in cash and 1,937,999 options. In 2005, his total compensation was $9,122,907.

By Semel, Nardelli, and Ovitz’s standards, Alexander’s compensation was positively miserly. It is 1/10 of Semel’s annual salary. According to Executive Paycheck, Alexander’s totals ranked in the 93th lowest percentile for executive compensation for the years 2001 -2003.

So why then is Alexander the only one of these CEOs that is in trouble? When you are stealing from shareholders, there are only three rules to follow if you do not want to take a government mandated vacation. They are, in order: disclose, disclose disclose. The SEC does not care how much an executive of a public company pays himself or herself. They have no regulatory power to challenge outsized compensation. Their only concern is the proper disclosure of this information.

Shareholders have a right to be angry at the behavior of the trio of Comverse executives: Alexander, CFO David Kreinberg, and General Counsel William Sorin. Laws, even stupid laws, have to be obeyed until they can be overturned. Shareholders do have a right to know. It is their company after all.

The executive’s reckless actions left the company temporarily rudderless and decimated shareholder value. Even worse, there was no need for the illegal actions. In this overheated CEO salary marketplace, Alexander could have probably paid himself whatever he wanted.

Kobi Alexander is currently facing more than 25 years in jail. John Walker Lindh, the American who aided the Taliban in Afghanistan, received 20 years. Whatever you think of Kobi’s crime, he did not commit treason. He is also not the poster boy for greed in the C-suite or the Paris Hilton of CEOs.

The SEC and lawmakers are not entirely blameless and should also be seeking absolution from shareholders. They have allowed the wages and perks of executive to rise unchecked. The bureaucrats and legislators stand around fretting, wringing their hands, and muttering “What can we do?”

They need to reevaluate existing laws and enact laws that make sense. If someone with the stature and sparkling clean reputation of former GE CEO Jack Welch can get caught up in an SEC investigation for non-disclosure, then the laws are too complicated.

Criminalizing backdating of options makes for good headlines and launches political careers. Has it really helped the constituency that it was designed to protect? The employees of Comverse are being laid off. The share price still has not recovered from the scandal.

If Kobi Alexander goes to jail, I hope that his cell is big enough to accommodate all the guilty parties.

[TonyGosling]

Metronet insists London Underground should pay for PPP overruns
13/06/2007
http://www.publicprivatefinance.com/Document.aspx?ID=894919

Troubled tube operator Metronet continues to claim that London Underground should pay for most of the £750m cost overruns in its public private partnership contract.

According to the construction press, Metronet insists it did not signed a fixed price contract. It claims the project’s costs increased when London Underground widened the scope of the work.

Metronet’s non-executive chairman Graham Pimlott is quoted as saying the company should be paid for the “economic and efficient” work it has done, adding: “If the customer asks for extra work to be done, then the customer pays.”

However, the independent arbiter, Chris Bolt, ruled in March that Metronet should pay for the increase in costs itself and that it had not operated in an “efficient and economic” manner.

[TonyGosling]

The Annexation of Mexico - Bankrolled by a $3,000,000 U.S. State Department grant, Mexico is upgrading its eavesdropping capabilities even without congressional approval of the constitutional amendment. The installation of a super-duper "communication interruption" system will allow the government to tap into landline telephones, cell phone traffic, and electronic mail. The new system is designed by Verint Technologies ("actionable intelligence for a safer world") and features automatic voice identification. Verint, a Nee York-based start-up that provides spy technology to everyone from Domino's Pizza to the National Security Agency, has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from Bush's terror war.

From the Folks Who Brought You Plan Colombia
The Annexation of Mexico
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=59&ItemID=13098
by John Ross
June 19, 2007

MEXICO CITY -- Plan Colombia, the $5,000,000,000 drug war boondoggle cooked up in 1999 by Bill Clinton and then-Colombian president Andres Pastrana and subsequently transmographied into a War on Terror adjunct by George Bush and Alvaro Uribe brought U.S. troops, fleets of helicopter gun ships, spray planes spewing poisons, and a vast array of human rights abuses to that troubled Latin American country. It also made Colombia the third largest recipient of Washington's foreign aid and the number one repository of U.S. military aid in the western hemisphere.

But Plan Colombia failed to stem the flood of cocaine pouring across U.S. borders nor has it even eradicated much Colombian coca acreage - 144,000 hectares continue to thrive under coca cultivation in Colombia concedes the U.S. State Department's Office of International Narcotics Enforcement in its 2006 annual report, and while spraying massive doses of glysophate did force some farmers out of business, production simply moved south, spreading throughout the Andean region.

Indeed, the price of cocaine on U.S. streets dipped slightly last year and supply and quality remained constant, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. For the first time in five years, the DEA registered an increase in first time users. 90% of the cocaine confiscated in the U.S. last year continues to be Colombian-based.

Despite the abysmal results, the U.S. Congress has again budgeted $367,000,000 for Plan Colombia in 2008 although some congressional reps appear to be tiring of fighting this losing war and are beginning to call for an exit strategy. With the Democrats in titular control of both houses, doubts about Plan Colombia forced consideration of a bi-lateral free trade agreement to be shelved this spring. President Uribe, in Washington to lobby for the pact, complained to the press that he was being treated as "a pariah."

Despite Plan Colombia's fading allure, the Bush administration is about to debut a sequel: Plan Mexico, an interdiction strategy to confront the
increasing "Colombian-ization" of Mexico by bi-national (Colombian and Mexican) drug cartels who have managed to spread their brand of mayhem into every nook and cranny of this distant neighbor nation.

The finishing touches for a Plan Colombia-like joint venture were worked out at the early June G-8 summit in Germany during a meeting between Bush and Mexico's freshman president Felipe Calderon, a special guest at the conclave. According to insiders in both camps as reported in the U.S. and Mexican media, Calderon will make a formal application for increased anti-drug assistance from Washington come August. Mexico currently receives $40,000,000 in drug moneys from the White House.

If you liked Plan Colombia, you are going to love Plan Mexico.

Like Plan Colombia, Mexico will be gifted with tons of military equipment, whiz-bang technology, and billion buck grants to battle the cartels, although U.S. troops will be held out of the package (for now) because of Mexico's long-standing resistance to such deployment. The U.S. military has invaded Mexico eight times since both countries won their independence from Europe 200 years ago.

Fumigation of Mexican drug crops will also meet with hard-core resistance on this side of the border. Whereas U.S. spray crews have been dousing southern Colombia for seven years with the virulent defoliant glysophate, poisoning food crops, streams, farm animals, and farming populations, Mexico was painted with Paraquat in 1969 when Richard Nixon launched his bonehead "Operation Intercept" to destroy Mexican marijuana plantations without first asking the Mexican government's permission. One dazzling result of Operation Intercept was to incite domestic marijuana cultivation in the U.S. - the U.S. now produces more marijuana than Mexico.

Mexico halted its U.S.-financed spray program several years ago when it could no longer obtain replacement parts for the planes, with no noticeable increase in drug cropping. Mexico is not suited to coca cultivation and is used by the cartels principally as a "trampoline" to move Colombian cocaine across the U.S. border. Opium poppy cropping, as in Colombia, accounts for single digit percentages of U.S. heroin imports, 90% of which have their origin in Washington's War on Terror partner Afghanistan.

Plans for Plan Mexico were inadvertently leaked at a June 8th - 9th bi-lateral meeting of Mexican and U.S. lawmakers in Austin Texas by Democratic congressperson Silvestre Reyes, now chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee and a former U.S. Border Patrol honcho who pioneered construction of the first wall between Mexico and the United States back in the mid-90s. As top dog on the House Intelligence committee, Reyes is a heavy hitter in the Bush terror war and Plan Mexico is seen as much of a War on Terror tool as it is a drug interdiction strategy.

Officials in both Washington and Mexico City have remained tightlipped about the joint endeavor, implying that Reyes' revelations may have tipped off the cartels.

Since taking office December 1st, Calderon, whose election was as shady as George Bush's Florida 2000 sham victory, has been prepping Mexico for the nation's new enhanced role in Washington's War on Terror. Within the first week of his chaotic swearing-in, Calderon sent 30,000 Mexican troops into nine drug-saturated states in a virtual declaration of martial law to combat the five Mexican-Colombian cartels that dominate the drug trade here. Civil rights were suspended and abuses abounded but precious little cocaine was confiscated.

The new president followed up the military offensive by moving a draconian anti- terrorism measure in the Mexican congress. The so-called "International Terrorism Law" which actually criminalizes domestic dissent, passed both houses with only token opposition from the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and mandates 40 year prison sentences for "terrorist" activities defined as "the use of violence against persons, things, or public services that spread alarm or fear in the population or any part thereof in order to threaten national security or pressure authorities to take certain determinations."

This Mexican "U.S. Patriot Act" in effect transforms social change movements as diverse as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Greenpeace, and Oaxaca's Popular Peoples' Assembly (APPO) into terrorist organizations. The first application of the new law against Ignacio Del Valle, a leader of the machete-wielding farmers of San Salvador Atenco, resulted in a 67-year prison sentence. Del Valle's "terrorist" crime? Locking the door during a meeting of Mexico state school officials and local farmers so the officials could not abandon the room.

But Calderon was not done yet with converting his regime into a doppelganger of the Bush administration's perversion of justice. This April, the President, who, much like George Bush, is considered a usurper by over 50% of the Mexican electorate, foisted a constitutional amendment on his congress that would grant him carte blanche powers to tap phones and break into private homes without first obtaining a search warrant from a court. The amendment, which has not yet passed the legislature, bears a startling resemblance to George Bush's unconstitutional eavesdropping and surveillance of millions of U.S. citizens but with one notable caveat - Calderon, at least, went to his congress to modify the Constitution to allow such intrusions. Bush simply imposed his illegal operation in violation of his country's Magna Carta.

One purported benefit of Plan Mexico will be technology transfer, affirm boosters like Mexican attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora. Bankrolled by a $3,000,000 U.S. State Department grant, Mexico is upgrading its eavesdropping capabilities even without congressional approval of the constitutional amendment. The installation of a super-duper "communication interruption" system will allow the government to tap into landline telephones, cell phone traffic, and electronic mail. The new system is designed by Verint Technologies ("actionable intelligence for a safer world") and features automatic voice identification. Verint, a Nee York-based start-up that provides spy technology to everyone from Domino's Pizza to the National Security Agency, has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from Bush's terror war.

The Verint system will intercept tens of thousands of calls from the U.S. to Mexico and visa versa each day. Although these conversations will be officially recorded by Mexican authorities, the chatter will be admissible evidence in U.S. courts. Mexico's monopoly telephone company, Telmex, owned by Carlos Slim, the third richest man on the planet, tells reporters that it will comply with the government's eavesdropping plans.

Plan Colombia has sunk Colombia in a morass of corruption and human rights abuses. The drug war offensive was endorsed from its inception by the paramilitary "Autodefensa Unida de Colombia" or AUC, which, along with the long-lived leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), are prominent players on the Bush White House's terrorist list. The AUC, which is held responsible for 9000 extrajudicial killings since Plan Colombia kicked in (one leader, Salvatore Mancuso, boasts of 300 personal kills) shared the U.S. largesse in building up its arsenal and financed itself by drug running and extorting transnationals like Hyundai and Chiquita Banana Brands.

Now AUC leaders, whose 31,000 strong private army was granted amnesty in 2004, are spilling the beans to the Colombian Supreme Court about the extent of the paramilitaries' backing from the Uribe government and the military - 12 generals and 14 legislators in the national congress are under indictment in the escalating scandal that has severely eroded Uribe's presidency.

But Mexico's armed forces will not have to take lessons from their Colombian counterparts when it comes to violating human rights. In the latest of several such homicidal "incidents", Mexican troops opened fire on a family of five at a Sinaloa checkpoint June 2nd, killing three children. Rather than extending sympathy to the bereaved family, Mexico's Interior Minister Francisco Ramirez Acuna insisted that such tragedies are "the price we have to pay for our vigilance."

Details for the implementation of Plan Mexico were hammered out at a hush-hush June 9th closed door meeting in Morelos state just south of the capital that involved beleaguered U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, White House drug czar John Waters, and the attorney generals of Mexico and Colombia - Eduardo Medina Mora and Mario Iguaran. Iguaran recently replaced Luis Camilo Osorio as his nation's chief prosecutor - Osorio who is accused of whitewashing AUC's murderous activities is now his country's ambassador to Mexico.

As George Bush's only other Latin American ally besides Alvaro Uribe, Felipe Calderon borrowed a page from the faltering Colombian president's playbook by extraditing a dozen long-sought (but largely out of the loop) Mexican capos to the U.S. soon after taking office, an early signal that Mexican was ready to sell its sovereignty to Washington.

Both U.S. and Mexican authorities strongly deny that U.S. troops will be on the ground in Mexico anytime soon, a clear violation of Mexico's national sovereignty. Under Plan Colombia, U.S. forces grew to 800 "trainers", including 70 Green Beret Special Forces, and 600 private "contractors" (mercenaries.) Actually, Mexican troops receive extensive U.S. military training at Fort Bragg North Carolina's Center for Special Forces and Fort Benning, Georgia, the site of the infamous School of the Americas. Some of the trainees have since defected to the narco gangs, banding together in a truly terrorist brigade known as the "Zetas" who function as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.

With Plan Colombia as a model, Plan Mexico would also open the door to the use of private military contractors like Blackwater, on the ground here.

Mexican police agencies, long gangrenous with corruption, are already being trained in country by the U.S. FBI. Washington is pushing for the development of a hemispheric police force that will be able to cross borders. The International Law Enforcement Academy in El Salvador is a kind of School of the Americas for cops, which reportedly employs former Salvadoran death squad members as trainers.

Since the U.S. and Mexico achieved nationhood two centuries ago, Washington has had designs on annexing its nearest neighbor to the south. The United States invasion of 1846-48, the so-called Mexican War, deposed Mexico of all of its northern territories that today comprise 13 U.S. western states. Since then, Washington has invaded and annexed Mexico from afar. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement in effect annexed Mexico's economy. Beginning with World War II and extending through the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and now the War on Terror, the U.S. has sought to annex Mexico's security apparatus. Plan Mexico is, in fact, a plan to lock in the annexation of Mexico.


John Ross is the author of "The Annexation of Mexico - From the Aztecs to the IMF" (Common Courage 1998.) He is again in residence in Mexico City cogitating the future. Contact johnross@igc.org if you have further information.

[TonyGosling]

Financial information about Verint has become hard to find. Its quarterly reports are threadbare, and there has been no balance sheet or income statement available since the third quarter that ended Oct. 31, 2005. Verint hasn't filed an annual report in two years. "It probably is the only billion-dollar company that has been trading 5,000 shares," says Katsman. "It is absurd." Verint CEO Dan Bodner and the company's head of investor relations, Alan Roden, declined to be interviewed. The company also declined to answer any questions about how it is trying to work with shareholders concerned about the delisting.


Post-Delisting, Verint Still Stumbling
By Priya Ganapati - 6/25/2007 1:55 PM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/techsoftware/10364644.html

Nearly two years ago, when Aaron Katsman, managing director of America Israel Investment Associates, started hunting for his next investment, Verint Systems (VRNT) seemed like a real find.

Verint makes "video intelligence" products that help customers sort through hours of security videos and analyze them for potential threats. After Sept. 11, it was a fast-growing market -- and Verint looked as if it was at the center of it.

"It was a strong growth company in what we perceived as an up-and-coming niche," says Katsman about his thinking in late 2005. "We rode it part of the way up and now are a part of the way down."

That way down has been a steady slide. Earlier this year, Verint Systems was booted from the Nasdaq for failing to file its financial statements on time. It has traded on the Pink Sheets since Feb. 1.

The company's ambitions don't seem affected. In February, Verint acquired workforce management services provider Witness Systems in a $950 million deal that turned Verint into the second-largest company in the sector, behind rival Nice Systems (NICE) .

But for investors, betting on Verint has become an unexpected gamble -- and highlights a unique dilemma as to how Wall Street and traders deal with a delisted company sporting a billion-dollar market cap that's growing in a hot market.

Financial information about Verint has become hard to find. Its quarterly reports are threadbare, and there has been no balance sheet or income statement available since the third quarter that ended Oct. 31, 2005. Verint hasn't filed an annual report in two years.

"It's been a rocky road," says Daniel Ives, an analyst with Friedman Billings & Ramsey. "The delisting represents the turmoil Verint is going through, and it has been challenging for investors."

Verint's fortunes were tied to that of its 57%-owner, Comverse Technology (CMVT) , which also sits on the Pink Sheets following an almost unsurpassed accounting and stock option backdating scandal that made a fugitive of its CEO, Kobi Alexander.

Until Comverse cleans up its own books, Verint says it is helpless.

Verint CEO Dan Bodner and the company's head of investor relations, Alan Roden, declined to be interviewed. The company also declined to answer any questions about how it is trying to work with shareholders concerned about the delisting.

Verint shares are down about 14% to $30.25 since the beginning of the year. More important, since the delisting, Verint's trading volume has dropped dramatically -- and investors considering offloading their stakes face difficulty. The stock's average trading volume during the past months is about 62,000 shares a day -- and is often less than that.

"It probably is the only billion-dollar company that has been trading 5,000 shares," says Katsman. "It is absurd."

The lack of liquidity has taken interest away from the stock, analysts agree. Few large funds or institutional investors want to buy a stock they can't sell quickly.

On the surface, Verint's sparse financials look relatively strong. Revenue for the first quarter grew 15% to $101.2 million, and excluding charges, net income was $9.35 million, up from $7.71 million.

But they don't tell the whole story, and informational cornerstones of a good financial investment thesis -- such a cash flow position, inventory and balance-sheet ratios -- are unavailable.

Wall Street analysts concede that analyzing Verint is a challenge.

"We are making a lot of assumptions," says RBC Capital analyst Daniel Meron. "There are things we don't know, like what the actual gross margins are, so that creates uncertainties around modeling."

Meron and Ives say they rely on field checks and customer perspective to fill out what the company can't tell them.

"No one really knows what the actual numbers are," says Meron. "For a while there was no guidance, so the numbers were vague, and for those on the outside it is difficult to gauge what's going on."

But the delisting and lack of financial stats aren't all to blame for dampening investor attention, says Meron. Even before accounting issues rained down, Verint's growth rates and margins were slowing down, he says.

"They are growing and doing a good job overall, but Verint's shareholder base was a lot of momentum investors," says Meron. "Once top-line and bottom-line surprises diminished, some of them exited."

Those investors that have remained continue to believe in Verint's attractive business model and the chances that the company could be attractive to private equity.

"There are few players in this space, and it is a good growth opportunity," says Katsman. "And we are already seeing consolidation in the segment."

Verint's delisting problem is unlikely to put off any suitors, say analysts.

"It is a negative factor on the valuation," says Ives. "But if investors believe in the story, and the long-term growth is there, it is attractive. And the numbers are the numbers."

But criticism of Verint is generally hard to find among Wall Street analysts, who are reluctant to pull their support for the stock, despite low-liquidity trap for large investors. Verint has three strong-buy ratings, two buy, four hold and just one underperform.

On June 13, Deutsche Securities upgraded its rating to a buy and raised its price target for the stock from $32 to $40. Deutsche Securities owns Verint shares and has an investment banking relationship with the company; RBC Capital and Friedman Billings do not.

In its latest quarterly report on June 11, Verint offered guidance for the upcoming quarter -- the first time it has done so in more than a year. It could be a sign that the company is turning a corner, say analysts. Katsman hopes Verint will return to the Nasdaq later this year.

In the black hole of delisted companies, hope is the only thing that keeps shareholders going.

[TonyGosling]

Daniel Bodner, Chief Executive of Verint Systems and veteran of the Israeli army talks about his latest and most secret mission, in the surveillance industry.

The Evolution Of Analytics And Call Recording

NT: Please tell us about your company and type of business.
DB: Verint Systems is the leading provider of analytic software-based solutions for the security and enterprise markets. Verint solutions help enterprises capture massive amounts of structured and unstructured information, such as voice, video and text, and distill this information into actionable intelligence — timely, mission-critical insights for more effective decisions and optimal outcomes.
What does actionable intelligence mean to Verint? Actionable intelligence is mission-critical information that you can readily understand and use to improve business performance — timely information that you can act upon for better business outcomes.
In the security market, intelligence and law enforcement organizations use Verint to analyze and distill the huge amounts of information available to them and generate actionable intelligence to better protect lives and assets.
Enterprises use Verint’s ULTRA solution to analyze and distill the huge amounts of information generated within their contact centers. This capability improves agent performance, enhances contact center efficiency and filters back into the enterprise in the form of improved customer service, higher profit margins and the agility required to react to changing market conditions....................(more)

[TonyGosling]

Verint Systems (VRNT) Receives Formal Order of Investigation from the SEC
07-16-2007 04:27:37 PM

In Today's 8-K Filing From Verint Systems (OTC: VRNT): On October 27, 2006, Witness Systems, Inc. (subsequently renamed Verint Americas Inc.) received notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") of an informal non-public inquiry relating to the stock option grant practices of Witness from February 1, 2000 through the date of the notice. Verint Systems Inc. acquired Witness on May 25, 2007.

On July 12, 2007 the Company received a copy of the Formal Order of Investigation from the SEC. The Company believes that the focus of the formal investigation is substantially the same as the informal inquiry The Company and Witness have fully cooperated, and intend to continue to fully cooperate, with the SEC regarding this matter.

http://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Verint+Systems+(VRNT)+Rece ives+Formal+Order+of+Investigation+from+the+SEC/2674898.html