Three men allegedly involved in the unauthorised export of computer servers that may have contained restricted Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips are expected to return to court in October for a pre-trial conference.
According to local media reports, the next court date for the accused has been set for 17 October 2025.
The case involving one of the men, 51-year-old Chinese national Li Ming, was mentioned in court on 22 August. During that hearing, Deputy Public Prosecutor Louis Ngia requested an eight-week adjournment, citing the “significant scale” of ongoing investigations.
Li is represented by lawyers Wendell Wong and Andrew Chua of Drew & Napier.
Wong raised concerns about the pace of the case, stating that the delays were “troubling” and adding, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
In response, DPP Ngia denied that justice was being delayed.
The other two individuals, Singaporeans Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 41, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49, were not mentioned in court on that day, but their cases are scheduled to proceed alongside Li’s during the same pre-trial conference, according to media coverage.
Li faces two charges: one of fraud and one under the Computer Misuse Act.
He is alleged to have falsely stated in 2023 that a company he controlled, Luxuriate Your Life, would be the end user of certain servers supplied by Supermicro.
He also purportedly accessed an OCBC corporate bank account without authorisation to make financial transfers for the same company on 19 June 2024.
Woon and Wei each face two fraud charges.
They are accused of conspiring to defraud Dell and Supermicro by making false representations in 2024 regarding the intended end users of server shipments.
At the time of the alleged offences, both men were employed at Aperia Cloud Services, a Singapore-based technology company. Wei served as chief executive officer, while Woon was the chief operating officer.
The cases are part of a broader investigation into possible violations of United States export controls.
Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam previously stated that the servers most likely contained components subject to US export regulations.
In 2022, the US government imposed restrictions on the export of high-performance AI chips, including those manufactured by Nvidia, in a bid to limit access by Chinese entities.
The three men were charged in Singapore in February 2025 after the Republic was named in a US probe into whether Chinese start-up DeepSeek obtained restricted Nvidia chips through third-party sales in other jurisdictions, including Singapore.
Preliminary investigations suggest that servers from Dell and Supermicro were shipped to companies in Singapore before being exported to Malaysia.
These servers may have contained export-controlled Nvidia chips. The investigation began following an anonymous tip-off.
The US-led inquiry gained attention after DeepSeek launched an AI platform in January 2025, allegedly using Nvidia chips.
The product was reportedly developed at significantly lower costs compared to US rivals. The launch caused a major disruption in US markets, reportedly wiping out around US$1 trillion (S$1.29 trillion) in tech stock value.
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