Singaporean prosecutors have filed new charges against a suspect in an AI sever fraud case as part of the country’s growing efforts to prevent Nvidia chips being illegally diverted to other locations including China, Bloomberg has reported.
The accused, Alan Wei Zhaolun, pleaded not guilty in a local court case on Monday, with the outlet reporting his lawyer argued the charges were “misconceived”. His bail was revoked after prosecutors raised the amount from 450,000 Singaporean Dollars ($348,190) to over 1.2 million Singaporean Dollars earlier in the day.
Prosecutors allege that the Chinese-born businessman defrauded some of the world’s largest server makers to gain access to hardware that may have contained Nvidia AI chips subject to US export controls. He also faces charges of fraud by false representation and money laundering.
The case centres on whether executives including at tech firm Aperia Group, including Wei, misled Dell, Supermicro, and Asus by misrepresenting the real end-users of hardware acquired from these server providers. Nvidia, Dell, Supermicro and Asus are not accused of any wrongdoing.
Bloomberg, citing a police statement from 1 July, reported that Wei, as well as fellow Aperia Group executives Aaron Woon Guo Jie and Jenny Lim, falsely told suppliers that one of Aperia Group’s companies would be the end-users of these servers.
Lim and Woon have also been charged with fraud, alongside Chinese national Li Ming, controller of Singapore-based company Luxuriate Your Life. They have not yet indicated how they will plead.
If convicted, the four could face prison time, a fine, or both.
Senior government officials in the country have repeatedly said they will clamp down on attempts to use Singapore-linked firms to avoid foreign trade sanctions after Southeast Asia emerged as a critical hub for routing AI chips to China.
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