SINGAPORE: The servers linked to a fraud case in Singapore may have contained Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips which were then sent to Malaysia, Minister for Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam said on Monday (Mar 3).
“The question is whether Malaysia was a final destination or from Malaysia, it went to somewhere else, which we do not know for certain at this point,” he told reporters.
“But we assessed that there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers.”
The chips were embedded in servers supplied by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based companies, before they went to Malaysia.
Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips are subject to US export restrictions. It was recently reported that US authorities are investigating whether Chinese AI sensation DeepSeek had circumvented sanctions through third parties in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
Singapore charged three men with fraud last week in connection with the alleged movement of Nvidia chips, after raids were conducted at 22 locations. They are accused of misleading a supplier of servers on the end-user of the items.
Mr Shanmugam said investigations into the three men were carried out independently by Singapore after authorities received an anonymous tip-off and not requested by the US or any other country.
“There has been some speculation linking this case with the potential circumvention of US export controls for advanced Nvidia chips. Now this case is unrelated. It’s an independent investigation conducted by Singapore,” he said.
“Investigations showed potential breaches of our domestic laws, and so we moved quickly to deal with it.”
