Chinese court sentences Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan to life in prison

Court verdict and corporate penalties

The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court sentenced China Evergrande Group founder Hui Ka Yan to life in prison on Thursday following his conviction for eight financial crimes. The court ordered the lifetime revocation of Hui's political rights and the complete confiscation of his personal assets. Judges also imposed 15.82 billion yuan ($2.35 billion) in corporate fines across the conglomerate's entities, ordering Evergrande Group to pay 8.82 billion yuan and its subsidiary Evergrande Real Estate to pay 7 billion yuan. Hui appeared in public for the first time since his 2023 detention, wearing a dark navy shirt with greyed hair while flanked by two police officers. The tribunal ruled that Hui and his companies disrupted the Chinese real estate market and generated severe economic damage across domestic banking and investment sectors.

Scope of fraud and executive sentences

The court found that between 2016 and 2021, Evergrande engaged in financial fraud involving fund misappropriation, fraudulent fundraising, corporate bribery, and the illegal collection of public deposits. Investigations revealed that Evergrande collected millions of dollars in pre-sale funds from homebuyers, diverting the capital into new land acquisitions rather than ongoing construction and leaving hundreds of residential projects unfinished. The court convicted 56 individuals in connection with the company's downfall, handing down prison terms ranging from 22 months to 18 years to company executives and fundraising agents. Among those sentenced were Hui's two sons, Xu Zhijian and Xu Tenghe. In March 2024, Chinese regulators had previously fined Hui $6.5 million and barred him from the country's capital markets for life after discovering the company inflated revenues by $78 billion.

Rise from rural poverty to property giant

Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, was born into a rural farming family in Henan province in 1958 and was raised by his grandmother after his mother died when he was one year old. He worked for a decade as a technician in a state steel plant before moving to Shenzhen in 1992 and founding Evergrande in Guangzhou in 1996. He previously described the poverty of his youth during public remarks.

The bedsheets I laid out, the quilts I covered myself with and the clothes I wore were all covered with patches.

Evergrande listed in Hong Kong in 2009 after raising $729 million, expanding through debt borrowing to become China's top-selling real estate developer with annual sales reaching $100 billion in 2020. The business expanded into sports, electric vehicles, theme parks, and healthcare, purchasing the Guangzhou football team in 2010 and winning eight domestic titles. Forbes estimated Hui's personal net worth at $45.3 billion in 2017, making him the richest person in Asia before government borrowing curbs in 2020 restricted the sector's credit access.

Five-year collapse and financial fallout

Evergrande struggled to meet debt obligations after Beijing enacted tighter leverage regulations in 2020, resorting to steep property discounts before defaulting on the majority of its $300 billion in liabilities in 2021. The developer suspended share trading in March 2022 after lenders seized 13.4 billion yuan ($1.87 billion) in bank deposits from its property management unit. Auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers resigned in January 2023 over accounting disputes, shortly before Evergrande reported combined net losses of 581.9 billion yuan across the 2021 and 2022 financial years. The developer was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2025 and ordered into liquidation.