The employee was taking off days without taking vacation to work on hobbies without telling HR or Management. He was just not showing up. This happened with many employees all the time.
My coworker at a Yahoo office in SF moved to Uruguay (where his wife is from) and then expected the company to fly him in for important meetings. He got away with it for a bit before HR caught wind. Even for them it was too much.
HR's issue was probably more along the lines of you're violating internal policies and probably various tax, etc. laws if you're supposedly living in one place and are actually living somewhere else--especially in a different country.
