The founder of the collapsed Chinese real estate giant Evergrande, Hui Ka Yan, has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to several financial crimes.
Hui was found guilty of asset embezzlement and corporate bribery. The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court also ordered the confiscation of all his personal assets.
The court fined the companies formerly controlled by Hui a combined total of 15.82 billion yuan ($2.35 billion; £1.73 billion) for multiple offences, including falsifying records and concealing debts.
The ruling marks a major development in the fallout from Evergrande’s collapse, which contributed to a prolonged crisis in China’s real estate sector and caused significant losses to investors, banks and homebuyers.
The court said Hui and his businesses had “seriously disrupted” China’s property market and caused significant economic losses.
Several other Evergrande executives were also sentenced. State media reported that Hui’s two sons, Xu Zhijian and Xu Tenghe, received prison sentences ranging from 22 months to 18 years.
Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, rose from humble origins in rural China to become one of the country’s most powerful property developers.
He founded Evergrande in 1996 and built the company into China’s largest real estate developer through an aggressive expansion strategy that relied heavily on debt.
At its peak, Evergrande had a stock market value of more than $50 billion, while Hui was once considered the richest person in Asia.
However, the company’s rapid expansion left it with huge debts.
In 2020, Beijing introduced measures aimed at limiting excessive borrowing in China’s real estate sector. Evergrande subsequently struggled to meet its debt obligations and began selling properties at deep discounts in an attempt to raise money.
The company ultimately collapsed in 2021, leaving hundreds of housing projects unfinished and thousands of homebuyers facing uncertainty.
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During court proceedings in April, it emerged that Evergrande had collected millions of dollars in advance payments from people buying homes, but had diverted some of the money into other real estate developments instead of using it to complete the projects.
Hui had already faced legal action over Evergrande’s financial reports. In March 2024, he was fined $6.5 million and banned for life from China’s capital markets after the company was found to have overstated its revenue by $78 billion.
Subsequently, Evergrande’s market value fell by 99%. Its shares were finally delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August 2025 after more than 15 years of trading.
The company’s collapse has been closely linked to China’s broader housing crisis, which continues to weigh on the country’s economy.
At its peak, the real estate industry accounted for about a third of China’s economic output and was a major source of revenue for local governments.
Evergrande’s failure was followed by financial difficulties at several other major Chinese property developers, further deepening concerns about the health of the world’s second-largest economy.
(BBC News)
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