Trial of Broadcom Corp. Founder Nicholas Delayed Until 2010

The criminal trial of Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III, who is accused of manipulating stock options to reward his employees, has been delayed and will not begin until 2010, a federal judge said.Nicholas, the Orange County (Ca.) billionaire, had asked for the delay in the start of his trial, which had previously been set to begin in April 2009. He also faces charges of providing drugs and prostitutes to friends and business associates, said he and his legal team needed more time to prepare for the trial.The case has attracted intense media attention and public interest in mostly-conservative Orange County, where surveillance-camera footage allegedly showing Nicholas snorting cocaine and cavorting with prostitutes has been released over the internet.Nicholas’ trial is now set to begin Feb. 9, 2010 in the Santa Ana courtroom of U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney. A separate trial will be held in October 2009 for William Ruehle, who was Broadcom’s former chief financial officer at the time of the alleged stock manipulation.In a separate development in the same case, Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli has appealed the judge’s decision to reject a plea agreement Samueli had struck with prosecutors. The deal would have allowed him to pay a $12-million fine and serve probation, but no jail time, for lying to regulators about his role in the alleged crimes.Samueli, a major supporter of the arts in Orange County and the owner of the Honda Center and the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League, had hoped to avoid doing any prison time for his alleged part in the scheme.Nicholas, Samueli and Ruehle are accused of backdating employee stock options to make them more valuable and failing to disclose the manipulations in public filings, as required by law.Meanwhile, a federal judge in Los Angeles has given the green light to shareholders to move forward with a lawsuit accusing Broadcom of inflating reported earnings by failing to disclose the backdated stock options given to employees.