Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan sentenced to life in prison in China

The founder of China Evergrande Group, Hui Ka Yan, has been sentenced to life in prison by a court in Shenzhen. The court also ordered the confiscation of all his personal property. In the same ruling, Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan, while its real estate unit was fined 7 billion yuan.

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Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, pleaded guilty in April to several charges, including embezzlement of assets and corporate bribery. According to the court and state media, the case centred on conduct linked to the company's collapse and the wider fallout from its financial crisis. The sentencing marks one of the most significant legal outcomes yet in the long-running unraveling of the property giant.

Evergrande was once China's biggest real estate developer and at one point had a market valuation of more than $50 billion. Its rapid expansion was fuelled by heavy borrowing, and the company later came under intense pressure after Beijing introduced measures in 2020 to curb debt in the property sector. The firm then sold homes at steep discounts in an effort to stay afloat before collapsing in 2021.

The court heard in April that millions of dollars in pre-sale funds from home buyers had not been used for construction, leaving hundreds of unfinished projects. The ruling is important because Evergrande's failure became a symbol of the broader property-sector slump in China. The company's implosion hit investors and domestic banks, and it has continued to weigh on the wider economy.

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Hui's case also reflects the authorities' continuing effort to address misconduct in a sector that was central to China's growth for years. His earlier punishment in March 2024, when he was fined and banned from China's capital market for life over overstated revenue, showed that the legal pressure on him had already been building. Hui rose from modest beginnings in rural China and founded Evergrande in 1996.

He built the company into a major developer through aggressive expansion backed by borrowed money, and he was once estimated to be Asia's richest person. The company's shares later lost almost all of their value before being removed from the Hong Kong exchange in August 2025 after more than 15 years of trading. That decline underlines how far the group has fallen since its peak.

What remains unclear is how the ruling will affect other parts of Evergrande's wider restructuring and whether further legal action will follow. The case also leaves open the question of how quickly China's property market can recover from the damage caused by the sector's debt crisis. For now, the sentencing stands as a major milestone in the aftermath of one of the country's most consequential corporate collapses.

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