China on Thursday sentenced the founder of embattled property giant Evergrande to life in prison and “fined the group more than US$2 billion” for offences including fraud, five years after a high-profile default. 9304
Hui Ka Yan, also known as Xu Jiayin, “was sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court on Thursday” in Shenzhen. The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court said he was convicted for “multiple crimes and fined, received a life sentence, with political rights revoked for life and all his personal property confiscated”. 77189304
As well as the life sentence, “Hui was also ordered to forfeit all his personal assets and was stripped of all political rights”. f03a
The court found that “between 2016 and 2021, Hui violated laws by falsifying financial statements, inflating assets and concealing liabilities across his sprawling real estate empire”. It said Evergrande and Xu “violated national laws by engaging in continuous, large-scale financial fraud and other means to inflate assets and conceal liabilities”. 4d4e9304
Hui “pleaded guilty in April to charges that also included embezzlement and bribery”. According to the verdict, he was found guilty of “misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery”. 93047718
The court also imposed heavy fines on the company. “Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan ($1.23 billion), and Evergrande Real Estate was fined 7 billion yuan”, for a total of “15.82 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion)”. The court said it “will continue to pursue Hui’s illegal gains and demand repayments on the shortfalls”. f03a93044d4e
“The criminal conduct of China Evergrande Group, Evergrande Real Estate, and Hui Ka Yan seriously disrupted the order of the socialist market economy, infringed upon public and private property rights, and undermined the integrity of public officials”, the verdict stated. The court added the acts “involved particularly huge amounts and egregious circumstances, caused particularly significant economic losses and caused particularly serious social harm, and should be severely punished according to law”. 93b67718
Evergrande was once “the face of Chinese real estate, surfing a decades-long property boom”. The company defaulted in 2021 “after struggling to repay creditors” and now has “$300 billion in liabilities”. Its crisis “has been at the heart of a wider Chinese real-estate shock, that has tested the world’s second-largest economy”. 9304f03a
The sentence “marks a key moment in China’s continuing real-estate crisis, which has dented consumer confidence in the country”. f03a
Hui, 67, “had not been seen in public since Chinese authorities detained him in 2023, following Evergrande’s default”. In pictures released by the court, “a grey-haired Hui, 67, stood flanked by two officers, wearing a long-sleeved, navy blue collared shirt, as the court read out his sentence”. 7718
Evergrande’s liquidators declined to comment on the sentence. 7718