A court in southern China sentenced China Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan to life imprisonment for offences including large-scale financial fraud, bringing a severe criminal judgment against the businessman whose company defaulted during the country’s property crisis. The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court also ordered the confiscation of all his personal property and permanently revoked his political rights.
Hui, 67, is also known by his Mandarin name, Xu Jiayin. The court said that between 2016 and 2021, Evergrande and Hui repeatedly violated national law through extensive financial fraud and other methods that inflated assets and concealed liabilities. It also found that bribery had been used to obtain control of financial institutions, although the court statement did not identify those institutions.
The judgment followed Hui’s guilty plea in April to charges that included fraud, embezzlement and bribery. In explaining the sentence, the court said the conduct disrupted China’s socialist market economy, damaged the integrity of state personnel and caused exceptionally serious economic losses and social harm. Its WeChat announcement said Hui received penalties for multiple crimes, with the resulting sentence set at life.
Evergrande Group and its property subsidiary were fined a combined 15.82 billion yuan, reported as about US$2.4 billion. The court also ordered the return of outstanding illegal gains. The ruling extended beyond the founder: five other senior Evergrande executives received prison terms ranging from six to 18 years. State news agency Xinhua reported that 56 people, including Hui’s two sons, were imprisoned, with the shortest term set at one year and 10 months.
Evergrande had grown into a defining company of China’s long real-estate boom, selling homes while borrowing heavily. Its financing conditions tightened after the government introduced restrictions intended to curb excessive debt and property speculation. The developer defaulted in 2021 after it was unable to meet obligations to creditors, beginning a collapse closely watched for its effect on China’s housing market and wider economy.
Hui’s own trajectory mirrored that reversal. He had ranked among China’s richest billionaires and served on the Communist Party’s leading political advisory body. The life sentence, asset confiscation and loss of political rights marked a comprehensive fall from the wealth and political access he once held.
The court’s decision came as other major developers, including Country Garden and Vanke, faced scrutiny over their financial health. AFP reported that Chinese new-home prices had been declining for three years, making Evergrande’s prosecution part of a broader period of stress in the sector. The judgment determined criminal responsibility in Hui’s case; the supplied evidence does not state how the fines or recovery orders will be distributed among home buyers, creditors or other claimants.
Some lawmakers, political advisory body members and relatives of defendants attended the verdict, the court said. Its public announcement documented the penalties, but the supplied report did not describe any appeal, give a schedule for related proceedings or state whether Hui’s co-defendants would challenge their sentences.
The verdict resolved the criminal charges described by the Shenzhen court but did not close every consequence of Evergrande’s failure. Its significance lies in the scale of the penalties: life imprisonment and full personal confiscation for the founder, multibillion-dollar corporate fines, and prison terms for dozens of other defendants.
