Singapore arrests suspects in smuggling sanctioned Nvidia AI chips to China — faces 20 years in prison

US authorities have already expressed concern about the possible supply of sanctioned Nvidia accelerators to China via Singapore intermediaries, and now Bloomberg reports that nine suspects in such activities have been arrested in this tiny state, three of whom have been charged.

Image source: NVIDIA

According to the investigation, two Singaporean citizens, with the assistance of a Chinese citizen, misled a server equipment supplier by forging documents, naming Luxuriate Your Life Pte as the end user of these products. In reality, this company is allegedly used as a “buffer” for the supply of Nvidia products banned by US sanctions to China.

The attention of American officials to such schemes was involuntarily attracted by the success of the Chinese company DeepSeek in developing language models that are little inferior in their efficiency and speed to those created in Western countries using much larger hardware and financial resources. What Nvidia products the accused were trying to import to China and who was their supplier is not specified. However, it is known that the accused face up to 20 years in prison. Police are said to have arrested six more suspects in this case. In total, about 22 individuals and companies are in development.

In its annual fiscal report published yesterday, Nvidia notes that although 18% of its revenue is conducted through the accounts of Singaporean companies, in fact, no more than 2% of the brand’s products in value terms remain in this country. In certain periods, Nvidia’s share of revenue in Singapore reached a fifth of the company’s total revenue. In addition, by the end of last year, it grew more than threefold, outpacing all other macro-regions in terms of growth rates. Only in the United States does the company currently receive more revenue than in the Singapore jurisdiction.