When asked about allegations that they allegedly paid kickbacks to gain business from Apple, the electronics component suppliers decided to keep mum.

"I can't comment on anything right now," said Andric Ng, CEO of Jin Li Mould Manufacturing from Singapore. The company was named in papers filed last week with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose.

Kaeder Electronics from China likewise declined to comment. In addition, Paul Kim, an employee of South Korean company Cresyn, said that there were no employees in the firm's Seoul office who can answer questions regarding the allegations.

In a report published by the San Jose Mercury News, the three suppliers and three others allegedly paid around US$1 million to Paul Shin Devine, who was Apple's global operations manager for the iPod music player. For the alleged bribe, the companies were said to have been given information that enabled them to negotiate favorable contracts from Apple. Devine allegedly gave a part of the kickbacks to Andrew Ang. Ang is an employee of Jin Li. The indictment said that Ang helped broker deals with his employer and others.

According to his profile on the LinkedIn social networking Web site, Devine had worked at Apple for five years. The profile also showed that prior to his stint at Apple, he worked as a product manager at Teledyne and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management,.

A federal indictment has been handed out, charging both Devine and Ang with wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy. Devine is facing an additional charge of money laundering and monetary transactions with criminally derived property.

Accordin to the San Jose Mercury News, the payments were allegedly sent to Asian bank accounts under the name of Devine's wife in small amounts so they would evade attention. Devine is due to appear in court in San Jose.