Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- A court hearing to determine whether a 2001 criminal case against the chief accuser of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam will be unsealed was delayed for two weeks.

Rajaratnam’s lawyers filed a request in federal court in San Jose, California, seeking access to documents in the case involving former Intel Corp. executive Roomy Khan, who once worked at Galleon. A hearing on the request originally scheduled for Nov. 23 was moved to Dec. 7, according to Elizabeth Garcia, a clerk for U.S. District Judge James Ware, who is handling the San Jose case. Garcia didn’t say why the hearing was delayed.

Rajaratnam’s lawyer, Stephen Mansfield, told a judge in a court filing that prosecutors won’t oppose the unsealing. Mansfield didn’t return a call or e-mail seeking comment yesterday.

Prosecutors in Manhattan are relying on Khan, 51, to help them build a case against Rajaratnam, 52, who was arrested on insider-trading charges on Oct. 16. From 2004 to 2007, Khan conspired with at least eight people to trade on secret tips gleaned from company insiders and others, prosecutors said. In addition to pleading guilty in that case, Khan was convicted in 2001 in federal court in San Jose for leaking secrets to a person at Galleon.

Lawyers for Rajaratnam have argued he was unaware of the 2001 case against Khan. The public disclosure of the documents will counter a suggestion in media reports of a prior scheme between Khan and Rajaratnam, they said.

Jack Gillund, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco, said on Nov. 19 that he would “neither confirm nor deny” Mansfield’s claim that prosecutors wouldn’t oppose efforts to unseal Khan’s case.

Hilton, Google

Khan allegedly passed on to Rajaratnam and others proprietary details in 2007 about pending takeover bids for Hilton Hotels Corp. and Kronos Inc., plus a tip that Google Inc.’s earnings would be lower than expected, according to court documents.

Khan, who is one of five people to plead guilty in the Galleon case, started cooperating with the government in its current insider trading probe of hedge funds in November 2007, according to court documents.

Rajaratnam has denied wrongdoing and is free on $100 million bail. Khan is free on $500,000 bail in the current case.

The case is U.S. v. Roomy Kahn, 01-cr-20029, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 21, 2009 00:01 EST