Singapore Court Case on Fraud Charges Adjourned until August 22

A Singapore court has adjourned a case against three men charged with fraud until August 22. The prosecution stated that the police would need more time to review new documents and seek responses from overseas parties in the investigations into the three men. The Singaporean men, Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 41, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49, along with Chinese national Li Ming, 51, were charged with making false representations to server suppliers about the end users of goods purchased in 2023 and 2024. Singapore Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam mentioned in March that the authorities had confirmed that servers involved in the fraud case may contain NVIDIA chips, and they had independently investigated the case after an anonymous tip-off. The US had banned the export of high-end chips from NVIDIA to China in 2022 over concerns they could be used for military purposes. The servers were supplied by Dell Technologies and Super Micro Computer to Singapore-based companies before being sent to Malaysia. The case is part of a broader police investigation into 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representations, amid concerns of organized AI chip smuggling to China. In 2024, Singapore was NVIDIA's second-biggest market after the US, accounting for 18% of its total revenue in the latest fiscal year. Actual shipments to the Asian trading hub, however, contributed less than 2% of total revenue, as customers used it as a center for invoicing sales to other countries.