Even if you believe the CEO's claims that he just wanted a counter PR campaign or something, the person orchestrating it ran a team named "Global Security and Resiliency" and ebay employees were having cars and hotels paid for.

I think execs, hotels and cars go beyond "Oh isn't it terrible what these rogue employees did" and ebay shares some liability. If a company decides to dump toxic waste in the river because the CEO commented that he was unhappy with how much cleanup cost, they don't get to hide behind "oh, well the CEO was just frustrated with costs, its really some rogue maintenance manager and his employees decided to redirect the waste so we're not at all liable, just the employees"