A mainland court sentenced Hui Ka-yan, former boss of Evergrande Group, to life in prison on Thursday after convicting him of multiple crimes.

It also fined Evergrande Group 8.82 billion yuan and Evergrande Real Estate Group seven billion yuan.

The court also ordered all personal property belonging to Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, to be confiscated.

The court found Evergrande Group and Hui guilty of illegally absorbing public deposits, fundraising fraud, illegally issuing loans, fraudulent issuance of securities, unlawful disclosure of important information, and corporate bribery.

It also convicted Xu of illegally using funds and embezzlement, and Evergrande Real Estate Group of fraudulent issuance of securities.

Hui pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud and illegally taking ⁠public deposits.

"Evergrande Group was... fined 8.82 billion yuan; Evergrande Real Estate was fined seven billion yuan; Xu Jiayin was sentenced for multiple crimes and fined, received a life sentence, with political rights revoked for life and all his personal property confiscated," the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in Guangdong said in a post on its WeChat account.

The court stated that Xu and the two companies seriously disrupted the socialist market economy, infringed upon public and private property rights, and undermined the integrity of public officials in the performance of their duties.

It added that given the exceptionally large sums involved, the particularly egregious circumstances, the extraordinarily heavy economic losses caused, and the extremely serious harm to society, they should be severely punished in accordance with the law.

Evergrande, once the country's premier ⁠developer, has defaulted since ⁠2021 on most of its US$300 billion in liabilities, its troubles emblematic ⁠of a crisis in the property sector.

Hui's sentence ends his rags-to-riches story, ⁠but is unlikely to bring much solace to Evergrande's domestic and foreign creditors.

In addition to Hui's sentence, the court also sentenced five other senior executives to fines and prison terms ranging from six to 18 years. (Xinhua/agencies)




Edited by Tony Sabine