Hui Ka Yan, the founder of China's Evergrande Group, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with all personal property confiscated. The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court found him guilty of embezzlement and corporate bribery, following his guilty plea in April.

The court also fined Evergrande Group 8.82 billion yuan (approximately $1.31 billion), while its real estate unit was ordered to pay 7 billion yuan. This sentencing marks a pivotal moment in the fallout from Evergrande's collapse, which shook China's property sector and severely impacted investors and domestic banks.

Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, rose from humble rural origins, raised by his grandmother, before venturing into property development and founding Evergrande in 1996. He oversaw the company's rapid ascent through aggressive expansion funded by massive borrowing. Evergrande became China's largest real estate developer, with a market valuation exceeding $50 billion, and Hui was once estimated to be Asia's richest person.

The company faced a major setback in 2020 when Beijing introduced measures to control debt in the property sector. This forced Evergrande to sell properties at steep discounts to stay afloat before collapsing in 2021. The court heard that the company diverted millions in pre-sale funds from homebuyers away from construction, channeling them into new developments and leaving hundreds of projects unfinished.

In March 2024, Hui was fined $6.5 million and banned from China's capital markets for life for overstating revenue by $78 billion. Evergrande's stock value plummeted by 99% before its shares were delisted from the Hong Kong exchange in August 2025. The implosion of Evergrande has been widely blamed for triggering a broader slump in China's property market, which continues to weigh heavily on the economy.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk