A federal indictment alleges that one of Supermicro’s co-founders, Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, orchestrated the routing of $2.5 billion in servers packed with Nvidia’s GPUs to China, violating export controls. The US Department of Justice charged Liaw and two others for conspiring to mislead government auditors.
Supermicro is facing scrutiny among investors due to compliance issues and reputational risk. An independent investigation led by board member Scott Angel and audit committee chair Tally Liu will investigate the company’s handling of servers. The investigation comes after a previous independent director found no evidence of fraud or misconduct in 2024.
Liaw was previously investigated in 2024 but retired before his return to Supermicro as a consultant in 2021. He became a full-time executive again in 2022 and resigned from the board on March 20 after being arrested. The indictment alleges Liaw, along with Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun, used fake servers and arranged for meals and transportation to evade government scrutiny.
In 2024, an independent investigation found no evidence of circumventing export controls. Supermicro CEO Charles Liang has stated that the company was a victim of the scheme itself. The latest board investigation will report its findings directly to Angel and Liu, who have hired law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson for advice.
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Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/supermicro-launches-internal-probe-cofounder-225902331.html