SINGAPORE - Prosecutors on March 6 tabled new charges for two of the three men allegedly linked to computer servers exported to Malaysia that might contain Nvidia chips.
Singaporeans Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 40, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 48, were each handed a second fraud charge, after the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) uncovered further evidence.
The men are accused of committing fraud on Supermicro, a US-headquartered supplier of servers, by fraudulently making a false representation that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the authorised ultimate consignee of end users.
Prosecutors said there may be other persons of interest linked to the case, adding that CAD investigators are recording statements from the individuals.
In total, investigators have seized 42 devices, comprising phones and computers. The items are currently being examined by forensic experts, said the prosecutors.
Investigators from CAD have also requested for bank statements from various financial institutions, to trace the movement of funds linked to the two men.
The offences were allegedly committed in 2024.
The case against the third man - Chinese national Li Ming, 51 - has been adjourned to an afternoon session.
The probe in Singapore came after an anonymous tip-off about computer servers that might contain Nvidia chips being exported to Malaysia, and possibly to an unknown final destination.
Preliminary investigations showed servers from US firms Dell and Supermicro, possibly embedded with Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips, were sent to Singapore-based companies before they were exported to Malaysia.
Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam said on March 3 the servers likely contained items subject to export controls by the US.
The US government had in 2022 imposed a number of export controls to restrict the sale of high-performance AI chips to China.
Questions were raised in the US earlier in 2025 when a Chinese start-up launched DeepSeek, an AI platform allegedly using chips from Nvidia, a leading AI chip designer in the US.
The launch of DeepSeek in January wiped around US$1 trillion (S$1.33 trillion) off the value of US tech stocks.
Authorities in the US are looking into the potential circumvention of its export controls for advanced Nvidia chips.
The chip designer released a statement to say that there was no reason to believe that DeepSeek had obtained any export-controlled products from Singapore.
The three men were first charged on Feb 27 with one count each of fraud.
Li is accused of committing fraud in 2023 on an unnamed supplier of servers, identified in court documents as “the items”.
He allegedly made a false representation that a company called Luxuriate Your Life would be the end user of the items.
Wei and Woon are accused of working together in 2024 to commit fraud on an unnamed supplier of servers, also referred to in court documents as “the items”.
The two men allegedly made a false representation that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the authorised ultimate consignee of end users.
Mr Shanmugam said authorities in Singapore are investigating if Malaysia was a final destination for the servers or if the servers went somewhere else.
He added that if there were false representations within Singapore about the servers’ final destination, then an offence under Singapore laws has been committed.
Meanwhile, Singapore has asked Malaysian and US authorities to share relevant information to assist in investigations.
Mr Shanmugam said that if the servers did contain US export-controlled items, Singapore would support US investigations, adding that the Republic has good laws to deal with the domestic situation.
The minister said that companies operating in Singapore are expected to take into account other countries’ unilateral export controls which apply to their international business activities and conduct their businesses transparently.
On Feb 18, Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng told Parliament that products sold by Nvidia to Singapore that were physically delivered here represent less than 1 per cent of the chipmaker’s overall revenue.
He said the remainder of Nvidia’s revenue billed to business entities in Singapore did not involve physical shipments into the country.
Dr Tan added that Nvidia’s products are mainly deployed here for major enterprises and the Government.
Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said during the same Parliament session that Singapore was not legally obliged to enforce the unilateral export measures of countries around the world.
“But we will enforce the multilateral agreed-upon export control regimes,” he added.
Mr Shanmugam said that countries in the trade and supply chain have to work together to ensure that everything is done properly, by enforcing their domestic laws within their jurisdictions.
“As you can see, the issue is not with the law. We have the laws.
“It’s with enforcement, and we are enforcing. But where you have an international chain of events, it will not be possible for any one country to deal with this by itself,” he added.
* Nadine Chua is a crime and court journalist at The Straits Times.
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