Bernama reported him as saying that Malaysia had commenced an investigation involving the police, the customs department, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, and parties from the US.

He said this in the Dewan Negara in reply to a supplementary question from Rita Sarimah Patrick Insol about what Putrajaya would do to protect Malaysia from being used to re-export AI chips or “advanced semiconductor production tools” to China.

Tengku Zafrul said the government would continue to monitor possible cases of fraud by companies importing servers containing unused chips.

On March 3, his ministry said it was investigating allegations that servers linked to a fraud case in Singapore, that might have contained Nvidia AI chips, were transferred to Malaysia. Singapore’s law and home affairs minister K Shanmugam said the investigation was continuing.

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