Servers likely containing Nvidia chips exported to Malaysia may have been bound elsewhere

An anonymous tip-off about computer servers that might contain Nvidia chips being exported to Malaysia, and possibly to an unknown final destination, sparked a police investigation.

- Andrew Wong

This alert did not come from any country or sovereign entity, but the claim was serious enough to get the Singapore authorities to launch an independent investigation, said Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam at a media briefing on March 3 at the Treasury.

Mr Shanmugam said preliminary investigations showed servers from US firms Dell and Supermicro were sent to Singapore-based companies. The servers were then exported to Malaysia.

He said these servers likely contained items subject to export controls by the US.

But whether they ended up in Malaysia, or another country, is being looked into, he added.

He was referring to a case allegedly linked to chipmaker Nvidia, which saw three men charged with fraud on Feb 27.

Mr Shanmugam 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 assess that there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers."

He said that if there were false representations within Singapore about the servers' final destination, then an offence under Singapore laws has been committed.

He added that Singapore has contacted Malaysia and the US for more information.

The Straits Times asked if the case was linked to questions posed surrounding Singapore's role in Nvidia's sales that were addressed in Parliament on Feb 18 following the release of the company's latest financial report.

Mr Shanmugam said he could not reveal too much as investigations are ongoing.