China Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Shenzhen, five years after the property developer’s collapse triggered widespread financial turmoil.
The 67-year-old former billionaire pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, including fundraising fraud, misuse of funds, bribery, securities fraud and illegally taking public deposits.
Once Asia’s richest man, Hui founded Evergrande in 1996 and built it into China’s largest property developer by contracted sales through an aggressive debt-fuelled expansion. The company later defaulted on most of its roughly $300 billion in liabilities, becoming a major symbol of China’s prolonged property crisis.
The court also ordered the confiscation of Hui’s personal assets and fined Evergrande 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion), while its main subsidiary Hengda was fined 7 billion yuan. Five other senior executives received prison sentences ranging from six to 18 years, while 56 people linked to Evergrande were sentenced overall.
Evergrande’s collapse wiped out investments held by homeowners and ordinary investors and triggered protests over unpaid wealth-management products.
The company was ordered into liquidation by a Hong Kong court in 2024 and was later delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. However, the liquidation process remains slow, with creditors still seeking to recover billions of dollars.
Hui’s life sentence is unlikely to provide significant relief to Evergrande’s creditors, who continue to face major losses from the company’s collapse.
Leave a comment