Probe on Nvidia exports: Chips allegedly moved through Singapore were sent to Malaysia; final destination under investigation
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam says Singapore’s investigations were carried out independently and not requested by the US, which had placed export controls on advanced AI chips.
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam speaking to reporters at The Treasury on Mar 3, 2025.
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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.”
WORKING WITH MALAYSIA, US
Mr Shanmugam said Singapore has asked Malaysian and US authorities to share relevant information to assist in investigations.
Because the supply companies are linked to the US, Singapore requires information and documents from American authorities. Similarly, since the servers were sent to Malaysia, details on their movement within or beyond Malaysia fall under its jurisdiction.
“If the servers did contain US export-controlled items, we have told the US that we would be happy to work with them and support any investigations in the US on that,” the minister said.
He added that Singapore is likely not the only transit point for such shipments. “As you can see from this case, the servers went from Singapore to a country other than China,” he said.
Mr Shanmugam said 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.
He added 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,” he said.
“But where you have an international chain of events, it will not be possible for any one country to deal with this by itself.”
Singapore, he assured, has “very good laws” to deal with its domestic situation.
