Hui Ka Yan, the founder of Evergrande, one of China’s largest property developers, has been sentenced to life in prison. All of his personal property has also been confiscated.
Mr Hui, 67, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, which included misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, and illegally taking public deposits. The Shenzhen intermediate people’s court stated that between 2016 and 2021, Mr Hui “violated state laws by employing methods such as sustained, large-scale financial fraud to inflate assets and conceal liabilities”.
The court added that Mr Hui’s actions “severely disrupted the order of the socialist market economy” and “caused exceptionally heavy economic losses”. The company he founded, Evergrande Group, was fined 8.8bn yuan (£950m), while its property arm received a fine of 7bn yuan.
More than 50 individuals linked to Evergrande were also sentenced on Thursday, with prison terms ranging from 20 months to 18 years. Mr Hui’s convictions are connected to a debt crisis at Evergrande, which delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange last year after defaulting on most of its $300bn in liabilities.