Three men allegedly involved in exporting servers possibly containing restricted Nvidia AI chips have been released on high bail amounts, with investigations still ongoing.
Chinese national Li Ming, 51, is out on $1 million bail. Singaporeans Alan Wei Zhaolun, 48, and Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 40, were released on $800,000 and $600,000 bail respectively.
On May 2, prosecutors sought a 12-week adjournment, citing the complexity of the case and the possibility of more charges for Li. The court instead granted an eight-week adjournment, with the case to be heard again on June 27.
Li faces one charge of fraud and one under the Computer Misuse Act. He is accused of deceiving server supplier Supermicro in 2023 by falsely claiming the end user of the servers was his firm, Luxuriate Your Life. He also allegedly accessed an OCBC corporate account without authorisation in June 2024.
Wei and Woon, both from Singapore-based Aperia Cloud Services – where Wei was CEO and Woon COO – are accused of conspiring to defraud Dell and Supermicro in 2024 by misrepresenting the servers’ end users.
Preliminary investigations suggest servers embedded with Nvidia chips were exported from the US to Singapore, then to Malaysia. The case surfaced following an anonymous tip-off.
Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam said on March 3 that the servers likely contained US export-controlled items. The US had restricted sales of high-performance AI chips to China in 2022.
The probe intensified after Chinese start-up DeepSeek, launched in January 2025, was reportedly powered by Nvidia chips. The event wiped US$1 trillion off US tech stock value.
US authorities are examining whether export restrictions were bypassed. Nvidia has stated there’s no evidence DeepSeek received restricted chips via Singapore.
Singapore is also investigating whether Malaysia was the servers’ final destination or a waypoint. Mr Shanmugam said any false declarations made in Singapore regarding the servers’ end use could amount to a local offence.
