SINGAPORE: Investigations into the cases of three men accused of fraud possibly linked to the movement of Nvidia chips remain in the preliminary stage, the prosecution said on Friday (Jun 27) as it asked the court for further adjournment.
It has been four months since Singaporeans Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 40, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49, and Chinese national Li Ming, 51, were first produced in court for charges mostly of fraud, with about US$390 million (S$519 million) involved.
The trio’s cases were heard again on Friday at the State Courts. None of the three men appeared in court as their attendances had been dispensed with.
The prosecution sought a further eight-week adjournment for police to conduct more investigations.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Phoebe Tan told the court that the police had been actively pursuing leads and conducting further investigations from the very start.
Asked by a District Judge if the case should be fixed for a pre-trial conference, Ms Tan maintained that the cases should not be moved as investigations remained at the preliminary stage. A pre-trial conference is an administrative hearing that is held in chambers and is not open to the public.
While Woon and Wei’s lawyers had no objections, Li’s lawyer, Andrew Chua, sought clarification on why the cases should not progress to a pre-trial conference. He said that he would prefer a pre-trial conference for his client.
He then asked the prosecution to explain why it needed a further adjournment, given that the case had previously been adjourned as well.
Ms Tan told the court that since the last hearing on May 2, the police had 10 follow-up interviews with persons of interest, witnesses and the accused persons.
The police have also initiated contact with relevant agencies, including foreign ones, and are still waiting for responses, Ms Tan said. These responses relate to evidence that would be material to the case at hand, she added.
Meanwhile, the police’s forensic branch has examined only 35 of 53 electronic devices. The rest are still pending data extraction, she said.
The police are also looking into new documents that have surfaced since the last hearing, Ms Tan added.
The prosecution would simply not be ready if the case were to be sent to a pre-trial conference, as investigations and responses from parties involved will have a “material bearing” on the case at hand, Ms Tan said.
After hearing the prosecution, Mr Chua said he had no objections to an adjournment.
No fresh charges were tendered to the accused persons at this hearing.
The District Judge then adjourned the trio’s cases to Aug 22, with a view to fixing them for pre-trial conferences then.
Woon and Wei each face two charges of being in a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud on two suppliers of servers, Dell and Super Micro, with the amount involved at about US$250 million, the prosecution said in a previous hearing.
The pair are said to have made false representations in 2024 that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the “authorised ultimate consignee of end users”.
Li is accused of committing fraud on Super Micro by allegedly claiming in 2023 that the end user of the items would be a company called Luxuriate Your Life.
He is also suspected of accessing an OCBC corporate bank account without authorisation to make and receive transfers for Luxuriate Your Life, a company he controlled, on Jun 19, 2024.
His alleged offences involve around US$140 million, the court previously heard.
The three men were among nine people arrested during raids by the Singapore Police Force and Singapore Customs in February, after media reports stated that intermediaries in the country were involved in the illegal movement of Nvidia chips to China, bypassing US export controls.
