Taiwanese authorities said they questioned 18 people, including 14 Unimicron employees.
Nvidia’s printed circuit board (PCB) supplier Unimicron is under investigation by Taiwanese authorities over suspicions of shipping Chinese-made PCBs using ‘made in Taiwan’ labels in violation of forgery laws.
Taiwan’s Taoyuan District Prosecutor’s Office said it searched Unimicron’s headquarters and a factory, and questioned 14 company employees – including the PCB business division’s general manager and deputy manager – alongside four related witnesses.
The prosecutors said the defendants are suspected of violations of Taiwan’s criminal code under laws around forging private documents and falsely labelling goods. Bail was set from around $9,500 to $470,000 for five of the defendants, while the remainder have been released.
Unimicron, in a statement to the Taiwan stock exchange, confirmed that its offices had been searched and said it would fully cooperate with the prosecutors.
Last week’s investigation comes just days after the US said it is losing roughly $19bn to $26bn in annual tariff revenue from goods that are transshipped through third countries to avoid US import duties, with a majority of the losses stemming from Chinese goods.
Earlier this month, Taiwanese prosecutors indicted nine people – including one Nvidia and two Supermicro employees – for allegedly smuggling AI servers into China. Those arrests are part of an ongoing investigation by authorities probing illegal transfers of AI servers built by Supermicro using Nvidia GPUs to China.
In March, the US charged three people associated with Supermicro, including co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw, over allegations of helping smuggle at least $2.5bn of AI technology into China.
Late last month, authorities arrested a Taiwanese national – reportedly an Nvidia employee – as part of the same investigation. Earlier in July, Supermicro said that two workers at its Taiwan unit were arrested as part of the investigation, while a previous round saw three people being detained.
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