By The Epoch Times | Created at 2025-03-04 00:17:37 | Updated at 2025-03-04 05:13:35
5 hours ago
The Dell and Supermicro servers were suspected of containing certain Nvidia chips that have export controls, prompting questions about their final destination.
Singaporean Home Affairs and Law Minister Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam has called on the United States to provide information relating to an ongoing fraud investigation involving U.S.-built servers with embedded Nvidia microchips.
The announcement on March 3 was made after the city-state arrested three men during a raid and charged them with false representation.
Shanmugam noted that the men’s alleged crimes involved Dell and Supermicro server brands.
“The case relates to servers with chips embedded in them coming into Singapore, and then from Singapore, they went to Malaysia,” he said.
“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. But we assessed that there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers,” Shanmugam told the press.
He pointed out that the Singaporean authorities suspected that the servers contained components “subject to US export controls.”
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Shanmugam noted that investigators needed more information from the United States because the two computer hardware brands were produced there.
Shanmugam went on to say that his country also wanted answers from Malaysia.
He told reporters that Singapore was not acting at the behest of the United States but that a tip-off originating in America triggered the arrests.
When pressed for details of the fraud case, he stated merely that inaccurate “declarations” were made “about ultimate destination of the servers” to Singaporean agencies, which amounted to fraud.
The United States has tightened exports controls aimed at blocking the Chinese communist regime from accessing advanced semiconductor technology and modernizing its military.
On Dec. 2, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued several restrictions, extending controls to 24 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment along with three categories of tools used in their production.
The following day, Beijing banned the export of critical minerals used in semiconductor manufacturing to the United States. This marks the first time China has singled out the United States in critical mineral export controls, included provisions to prohibit other countries from re-exporting those minerals to the United States, and banned exports of “dual-use” items to the U.S. military.
On Dec. 9, 2024, the Chinese regime’s State Administration for Market Regulation announced that it had launched a probe of technology company Nvidia Corp over alleged violations of China’s anti-monopoly law.
A spokesperson for Nvidia told The Epoch Times at the time that the company would be happy to answer any questions that regulators may have about the company.
Nvidia currently dominates the world’s artificial intelligence (AI) market, but chip export bans to China have allowed Chinese chipmakers to establish a foothold in the domestic market.
Catherine Yang contributed to this report.
