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19:02 June 29th, 2009

Broadcom’s Nicholas heads south for July 4 weekend

Posted by: Gina Keating
Tags: Mediafile, , , ,

Indicted Broadcom Corp co-founder Henry Nicholas III on Monday asked the federal judge presiding over his upcoming stock options backdating and drug possession trials to let him travel to Mexican holiday spot Cabo San Lucas with his family for the July 4 holiday weekend, court documents showed.

Prosecutors and guarantors of Nicholas’ $3.3 million bail had no objection to the plan for Nicholas to leave the United States on Friday and return on July 8, the documents showed.

Nicholas’ bail conditions bar him from leaving the continental United States without court permission and call for drug testing, home detention and electronic monitoring. His attorney, James Riddet, said Nicholas will not fly “or have possession of his personal airplane during this trip”.

Nicholas and Broadcom’s former CFO William Ruehle have pleaded not guilty to a 21-count indictment that accuses them of scheming to backdate millions of stock options and to falsify docuemnts to further the fraud from 1999 to 2005.

The case was one of the biggest stock options backdating scandals among many that rocked corporate America when they began surfacing in 2006.

Nicholas has also been accused of keeping a supply of illegal drugs that he used to spike the drinks of industry executives and Broadcom customers at parties held at his home in Southern California and Las Vegas and at a California warehouse.

The federal indictment also alleges that Nicholas hired prostitutes for himself and others and then used payoffs or threatened violence to keep the conduct secret. The indictment also details a 2001 incident in which a pilot flying Nicholas and some friends to Las Vegas had to don an oxygen mask during the flight to avoid marijuana smoke emanating from the cabin.

Nicholas has pleaded not guilty to the allegations.

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