By Bing Hong Lok

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Servers used in a fraud case that Singapore announced last week were supplied by U.S. firms and may have contained Nvidia's ( NVDA ) advanced chips, a government minister said on Monday.

Three men, including a Chinese national, were charged with fraud last week in Singapore. Domestic media linked the case to the transfer of Nvidia's ( NVDA ) AI chips from Singapore to Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.

"We assessed that the servers may contain Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips," Singapore's Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam told reporters on Monday.

He said the servers involved in the case were supplied by Dell Technologies ( DELL ) and Super Micro Computer ( SMCI ) to Singapore-based companies before they were sent to Malaysia.

"Whether Malaysia was the final destination ... we do not know for certain at this point," he said, adding that the authorities were investigating the case independently after an anonymous tip-off. 

The minister also said Singapore has asked the U.S. authorities if the servers contained U.S. export control items, and told them it would work with them in any joint investigation.

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.

Reuters also reported last year that Chinese universities and research institutes obtained Nvidia's ( NVDA ) advanced AI chips embedded in server products made by Dell, Super Micro and Taiwan's Gigabyte Technology.

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.

Singapore is Nvidia's ( NVDA ) second-biggest market after the United States, accounting for 18% of its total revenue in its latest fiscal year, according to Nvidia's ( NVDA ) stock exchange filings.

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.

Some Western AI entrepreneurs, such as Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, have said that DeepSeek had as many as 50,000 higher-end Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips that are banned for export to China. He has not produced evidence for the allegation or responded to Reuters' requests to provide proof.

DeepSeek has not responded to Wang's allegations. The startup has said it used Nvidia's ( NVDA ) H800 chips, which it could have legally purchased in 2023, and it has also disclosed a supercomputing AI cluster of Nvidia A100 chips.

In response to a Reuters' query, Dell said it maintains a strict trade compliance programme, taking swift and appropriate action, including termination of its relationship, if a customer fails to adhere to these obligations. Dell said the company cannot comment further as an investigation is under way.

Super Micro said that it complies with all U.S. export control requirements on the sale and export of GPU systems.

"If we become aware that a third party has exported or re-exported without the required licences, we investigate the matter and take appropriate action," Super Micro said, responding to Reuters' queries.

A Nvidia ( NVDA ) spokesperson declined to comment. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to requests for comments.