Taiwan issues indictments over alleged illegal export of AI servers to China

Taiwan prosecutors said on Monday they had indicted nine people, including employees of Nvidia and Super Micro, over ‌involvement in the illegal export of artificial intelligence servers to China.

Semiconductor powerhouse Taiwan is the world's largest producer of advanced chips used in AI applications. Prosecutors this year investigated the suspected illegal export of servers equipped with Nvidia chips subject to U.S. export controls. Washington has ‌imposed curbs since 2022 making it illegal for such semiconductors to be exported or sold in China without a license.

Eight people, ‌including one employee of Nvidia's Taiwan unit and two employees of Super Micro's Taiwan unit, were charged with breach of trust and document forgery in connection with the illegal export of high-end AI servers, prosecutors in the port city of Keelung said in a statement. Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment.

A ⁠ninth defendant ​was charged in a related ⁠case involving the alleged siphoning of funds from a distributor company involved, the statement said, without providing the full names of any of the defendants. The alleged scheme ⁠involved making it appear that 130 B300 servers ordered from Super Micro would be installed and used at a rented server facility in Taiwan.

Prosecutors ​said false end-user documents stated that the servers would be installed in Taiwan. Of those 130 servers, 74 were ultimately ⁠exported and delivered to Chinese customers through routes that included direct shipments to China as well as transhipments through Indonesia, Japan and Hong Kong, they said.

The remaining ⁠56 ​servers were intended to be exported to a company in Japan, prosecutors said, but Taiwan customs officials detected irregularities and stopped their export. 'FULLY AWARE' OF CONTROLS

The prosecutors said the defendants were "fully aware" that both Nvidia and Super Micro have "rigorous internal control procedures" ⁠regarding exports. However, the defendants "colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers, increasing corporate compliance costs, ⁠and severely damaging our nation's international ⁠image", they added.

Taiwan has tightened export controls in recent years to keep advanced technology and know-how from reaching China, which claims the democratically governed island as its own territory despite the strong objections ‌of the island's ‌government.