Evergrande Founder Hui Ka Yan Sentenced to Life Imprisonment
Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court imposes life term and full asset confiscation after the former tycoon pleaded guilty to fraud, bribery and related charges tied to the developer's collapse.
Shenzhen2 min read
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Hui Ka Yan, founder of China Evergrande Group, was sentenced to life in prison by the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court on 20 August 2026. The court also ordered the confiscation of all his personal property.
Hui pleaded guilty in April to eight charges. These included misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery. The court said the amount involved was exceptionally large, the circumstances particularly heinous, and the economic losses and social harm extremely grave.
Evergrande was fined 8.82 billion yuan and its main subsidiary Hengda Real Estate was fined 7 billion yuan, for a combined total of 15.82 billion yuan. Five other senior executives received prison terms ranging from six to 18 years. Hui's sons Xu Zhijian and Xu Tenghe were among those sentenced, with terms from 22 months to 18 years.
Once ranked as Asia's richest man, Hui built Evergrande from a 1996 start into China's largest property developer by contracted sales. The company relied on heavy borrowing to fund rapid expansion and land purchases. By 2020 it reported annual sales near 700 billion yuan. Hui's peak net worth reached 45.3 billion dollars in 2017 according to Forbes.
Evergrande defaulted on most of its more than 300 billion dollars in liabilities in late 2021. The failure left hundreds of unfinished residential projects and unpaid homebuyers. A Hong Kong court ordered liquidation in 2024. Shares were delisted from the Hong Kong exchange in 2025 after losing 99 percent of their value.
The property sector once contributed about a third of China's GDP and provided major revenue for local governments. Evergrande's collapse accelerated a broader downturn that has weighed on banks, investors and growth. New home prices continued to fall and investment declined in recent months.
Hui rose from a rural village in Henan province, where he was raised by his grandmother, and worked as a steel technician before entering property. The sentencing marks the formal close of one of the largest corporate failures in modern Chinese history and underscores the costs of the debt-fuelled boom that preceded it.
