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Three accused of defrauding a supplier of servers

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Case is part of investigation into 22 people and companies

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Media see link to movement of Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips to China's

DeepSeek

By Xinghui Kok

SINGAPORE/BEIJING, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Singapore charged

three men with fraud in a case domestic media have linked to the

movement of Nvidia's ( NVDA ) advanced chips from the city state

to Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.

The United States is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese

company whose AI model's performance rocked the tech world in

January, has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be

shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier.

The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation

of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false

representation, amid concerns that organised AI chip smuggling

to China has been tracked out of nations such as Singapore.

Broadcaster Channel News Asia said it understood the cases

were linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips from

Singapore to be used by DeepSeek, without identifying its

source.

Singapore's government did not immediately respond to email

queries whether the charges were linked to Nvidia ( NVDA ) and DeepSeek.

Charge-sheets accused two Singaporeans, identified as Aaron

Woon Guo Jie, 41, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49, with criminal

conspiracy to commit fraud on a supplier of servers in 2024.

They did this "by fraudulently making a false representation

that the items would not be transferred to a person other than

the authorised ultimate consignee of end users", the court

papers added.

The third person charged is Chinese national Li Ming, 51,

accused of committing fraud on a supplier of servers in 2023 by

claiming a Singapore-registered company Luxuriate Your Life Pte

Ltd would be the end user of the items.

DeepSeek, Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Luxuriate Your Life did not immediately

reply to requests for comment.

If found guilty of the offences, the men could face

penalties of a jail term of up to 20 years or a fine or both.

The police and charge documents did not elaborate on the

items involved in the case, or identify the supplier of servers.

On Thursday, police said in a statement they had arrested

nine people in a joint operation with customs authorities on

Wednesday, raiding 22 locations from which they seized

documentary and electronic records.

Singapore is Nividia's second-biggest market after the

United States, accounting for 18% of its total revenue in its

latest fiscal year, a recent filing by the chipmaker shows.

Actual shipments to the Asian trading hub, however,

contributed less than 2% of total revenue, as customers use it

as a centre for invoicing sales to other countries.

Last week, Singapore's foreign minister vowed to enforce

multilateral export control regimes, saying the city state would

not tolerate evasion, deception, false declarations or

miscounting.