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A Chinese court has sentenced Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan to life in prison, almost five years after the Chinese property developer collapsed.
The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court said on Thursday that Hui was being sentenced for “multiple crimes”, according to state broadcaster CCTV, and would have his assets confiscated.
The court also fined Evergrande Rmb8.8bn ($1.3bn) and Evergrande Real Estate, its mainland business, Rmb7bn.
The downfall of Hui, who was China’s richest person in 2017, encapsulates the changed fortunes of a property industry that once spurred growth but still weighs on confidence today.
Evergrande was the world’s most indebted developer at the time of its international default in late 2021, with liabilities of more than $300bn. Its failure came to embody an unfolding sector-wide crunch.
Hui pleaded guilty in April to charges ranging from embezzlement of assets to bribery. Evergrande’s mainland business was fined about $580mn in 2024 for inflating its revenues by almost $80bn in 2019 and 2020.
Its missed payments were part of a sector-wide wave of defaults within China’s vast property sector, where developers had for years expanded rapidly under a debt-driven model.
The sector remains under significant pressure, with new home prices continuing to fall last month and property investment declining.
The Shenzhen court said that Hui was the “actual controller” of Evergrande. It found that between 2016 and 2021 he, along with Evergrande and Evergrande Real Estate, “violated national laws and regulations by continuously and extensively fabricating financial statements to inflate assets and conceal liabilities”.
The court also listed illegal absorption of public funds, bribery and fraudulent issuance of securities among his offences.
Evergrande was listed in Hong Kong in 2009 and went on to issue tens of billions of dollars in international bonds. It was delisted last summer, and the Hong Kong entity is in the process of being liquidated.
In April two Hong Kong financial regulators fined Evergrande auditor PwC a combined HK$1.3bn ($166mn) following an investigation into the accounting firm’s work for the collapsed property developer.
In 2024 Chinese authorities also fined PwC Rmb441mn ($65mn) and the firm is under pressure in Hong Kong courts over the fallout of the collapse.
Evergrande’s liquidators, Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong from Alvarez & Marsal, are pursuing PwC for more than $8bn for audit negligence.
On Wednesday a court began hearing a judicial review of the HK$1bn ($127mn) settlement between Hong Kong’s financial regulator and PwC brought by the pair.
