Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan, once Asia’s richest man, was handed a life sentence after pleading guilty to fraud, bribery and other financial crimes as the property giant’s collapse continues to weigh on creditors and China’s economy.
China Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan was sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court on Thursday, five years after the property developer’s collapse sent shockwaves through China’s real estate sector and financial markets.
Hui, 67, who was once Asia’s richest man, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery.
The Shenzhen court said the crimes involving Evergrande, its main subsidiary Hengda Real Estate and Hui involved “particularly huge amounts” and caused significant economic losses and serious social harm.
The court also ordered the confiscation of Hui’s personal property.
Evergrande was fined 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion), while Hengda was fined 7 billion yuan. Five other senior Evergrande executives received prison sentences ranging from six to 18 years, with state media CCTV reporting that 56 people linked to the company, excluding Hui, were sentenced on Thursday.
Evergrande collapse
Evergrande, once China’s largest property developer by contracted sales, defaulted on most of its roughly $300 billion in liabilities after years of aggressive debt-fuelled expansion.
Its downfall became a symbol of China’s prolonged property crisis, which has weighed on economic growth, household confidence and financial markets.
More from BusinessThe company’s failure to repay billions of dollars in wealth-management products also triggered protests by ordinary investors, many of whom lost substantial savings.
Hui founded Evergrande in 1996 after growing up in a rural village in central China. His aggressive expansion strategy turned the company into a property powerhouse. In 2017, Forbes estimated his net worth at $45.3 billion, making him Asia’s richest person at the time.
But the developer’s debt-fuelled growth eventually became unsustainable.
A Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande’s liquidation in 2024, while the company was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year.
Creditors still waiting
Hui’s life sentence is unlikely to provide much relief to Evergrande’s creditors, who are still waiting for the liquidation process to recover assets.
Evergrande’s liquidators had sold only about $255 million worth of assets as of August last year, compared with creditors’ claims of around $45 billion.
The liquidators are also pursuing Hui and his former spouse in overseas courts in an attempt to recover about $6 billion in dividends and remuneration paid to Hui and other former executives.
China’s securities regulator had already fined Hui $6.6 million in 2024 and permanently barred him from the securities market after finding that Evergrande’s flagship unit had inflated earnings and committed securities fraud.
The latest sentence marks the most severe legal reckoning yet for the founder of a company whose spectacular rise and collapse came to represent the excesses of China’s property boom.
