The charges also come after Reuters reported in late January that the U.S. Commerce Department is looking into whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, Reuters said "organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates."
Zafrul told CNBC that Malaysia will be checking the chips' destination, but added, "what I can say today [is] the chips are not meant to be in Malaysia in the first place. So the question is, why is it going out of Singapore?"