Singaporean prosecutors secured eight more weeks to deepen a probe and potentially bring more charges against three men accused of fraud in shipping servers suspected of containing Nvidia Corp. chips banned from China.
Prosecutors asked for an extension in court proceedings to gather more evidence, and told the court on Friday they may bring additional charges. The judge set the next court hearing for June 27 and told the prosecution to present more evidence at that session.
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.
