The high-profile cases put Singapore and neighbouring Malaysia under spotlight, with both countries starting investigations into whether chips subject to US export curbs were funnelled via them to restricted destinations. Advanced artificial intelligence chips developed by US firms from Nvidia to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are banned by the US from being shipped to markets including China.
Nvidia is not the subject of Singapore's investigation.
Singaporean prosecutors initially charged the three men in late February with defrauding the server-computer suppliers by masking the products' real end-users. Law Minister K Shanmugam later confirmed the servers were made by Dell Technologies Inc. and Super Micro Computer Inc. Authorities are trying to determine the final destination of the products after they'd been shipped to Malaysia from Singapore, according to Shanmugam.
