KUALA LUMPUR (March 6): Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said there are no findings or reports indicating that Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips in servers were transferred to Malaysia from Singapore as claimed. 

"Currently, we have commenced an investigation together with relevant agencies, including the Royal Malaysian Police, Royal Malaysian Customs Department, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), and parties from the US.

“At the moment, there are no findings or reports indicating that [the matter] actually exists,” he said during a question-and-answer session in the Dewan Negara on Thursday.

Zafrul was replying to a supplementary question from Senator Rita Sarimah Anak Patrick Insol regarding the government’s actions to protect Malaysia from being used as an intermediary country or the re-exporting of AI chips or “advanced semiconductor production tools” to China, which are restricted, following allegations that Nvidia chips were re-exported through Malaysia to the republic.

At the same time, he said, the government would continue to monitor for possible cases of fraud by companies importing servers containing unused chips as mentioned in the request to import the goods. 

“We will continue to monitor...this afternoon (Thursday), Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo and I, as co-chairs, will hold the first meeting of the Joint Data Centre Task Force,” he said.

The ministry on Feb 25 said a Data Centre Task Force, which was approved by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), had been set up to discuss investment projections and key industry challenges, and also to address issues and concerns regarding data centre expansion in Malaysia, namely energy consumption, infrastructure readiness and challenges posed by regulations. 

On Monday, Zafrul's ministry announced in a statement that it was investigating allegations that Nvidia AI chips in servers linked to the fraud case were moved from Singapore to Malaysia. 

This followed a media report on the same day that quoted Singapore's Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam as saying that servers linked to a fraud case in the country might have contained Nvidia AI chips, which were later transferred to Malaysia. 

The chips were allegedly planted in servers supplied by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based companies before being shipped to Malaysia, according to news reports from Singapore. 

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