A court in Shenzhen has sentenced China Evergrande Group founder Hui Ka Yan to life in prison, closing the criminal case tied to the collapse of the world’s most indebted property developer.
The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court handed down the ruling yesterday, August 20, ordering the confiscation of all Hui’s personal property and stripping him of political rights for life.
The 67 year old, also known as Xu Jiayin, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, including fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery. The court said the amount involved was exceptionally large and the harm to society extremely serious, warranting severe punishment under the law.
Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan (US$1.31 billion), and its onshore arm, Evergrande Real Estate Group, was fined 7 billion yuan (US$1.04 billion), taking the combined penalty above US$2.3 billion.
According to Xinhua News Agency, more than 50 people were sentenced alongside Hui, including his sons, Xu Tenghe and Xu Zhijian, with terms ranging from 22 months to 18 years.
Chinese authorities have said Evergrande’s revenues were overstated by tens of billions of dollars in 2019 and 2020. Hui had already faced regulatory punishment before yesterday’s sentencing, having been fined roughly US$6.5 million by China’s securities regulator in 2024 and barred from the country’s securities markets for life.
Hui built Evergrande after founding the company in 1996, expanding it into China’s largest developer by contracted sales during the country’s property boom and becoming Asia’s richest man in 2017, with an estimated net worth of more than US$45 billion.
A Beijing crackdown on excessive borrowing in the property sector in 2020 triggered the group’s collapse, with liabilities eventually exceeding US$300 billion.
A Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande into liquidation in 2024, and its shares were later delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The fallout has reached millions of ordinary buyers and investors, with wealth-management products left unpaid and some apartment purchases left unfinished, prompting sustained frustration among affected homeowners.
The story China’s housing crash architect gets life in prison as seen on Thaiger News.