China probes 3 more executives from chip fund

SHANGHAI Reuters - China's corruption watchdog said on Tuesday that regulators were investigating three former and current executives linked to a company that manages the country's largest state-backed chip investment fund, widening a probe that has rattled the sector.

The CCDI said that Du Yang, a former director of investment firm Sino IC Capital and Yang Zhengfan, a current deputy manager, is suspected of committing serious violations of discipline and law and are being investigated by teams from the Commission for Discipline Inspection CCDI and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Liu Yang, a former general manager at Sino IC Capital, is suspected of committing law violations and is being investigated by the Beijing authorities, it said.

It didn't reveal more details. Reuters couldn't reach Du, Yang and Liu for comment via Sino IC Capital, which did not respond to a request for comment.

A two companies, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment and Piotech, issued statements disclosing that Yang was a director on their boards and that the investigation would not affect their operations.

The Big Fund, also known as the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, launched by Sino IC Capital in 2014, is a company that manages assets belonging to the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, which was launched in 2014 with the intention of spurring its semiconductor industry to leapfrog the likes of the United States, Taiwan and South Korea.

The latest probes follow earlier ones announced by the head of Sino IC Capital and the head of the Big Fund in July and earlier this month.

The Big Fund raised 138.7 billion yuan $20.54 billion for its first fund and 204 billion yuan for its second fund.

Over the years, the fund has provided funding to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China's leading chip foundry, Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd YMTC, a maker of flash memory, and a number of smaller companies and funds.