Evergrande Founder Hui Ka Yan Sentenced to Life in Prison
A Shenzhen court sentenced Hui Ka Yan to life imprisonment for embezzlement, fundraising fraud and bribery. The court confiscated his personal property and fined Evergrande companies more than 15 billion yuan.
Shenzhen2 min read
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Hui Ka Yan, founder of China Evergrande Group and once Asia's richest man, received a life sentence on 20 August 2026 from the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court.
The court found him guilty of eight charges. These included misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery. Hui had pleaded guilty in April.
Judges ordered the confiscation of all his personal property and stripped him of political rights for life. Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan. Its main subsidiary Hengda received a 7 billion yuan fine. Five other senior executives received prison terms ranging from six to 18 years.
The court stated that Hui and his businesses seriously disrupted the Chinese property market and caused significant economic losses and social harm. Evergrande had defaulted on most of its roughly 300 billion dollars in liabilities after its 2021 crisis. The company's collapse became a symbol of the prolonged downturn in China's real estate sector, which continues to weigh on the world's second-largest economy.
Hui rose from a village in Henan province. He worked as a steel technician after university, then moved into property sales in Guangzhou. He founded Evergrande in 1996. The firm expanded rapidly through heavy borrowing and high sales volumes, reaching peak annual sales of about 700 billion yuan. In 2017 Forbes listed Hui with a net worth of 45.3 billion dollars, the highest in Asia at the time. By 2023 that figure had fallen to an estimated 3 billion dollars.
Homeowners who bought unfinished Evergrande apartments reacted online with mixed comments. Some said ordinary citizens had paid the cost. Others noted that imprisonment might protect him from further risks. The sentencing closes a major chapter in the official response to the property crisis that began five years earlier.
Chinese authorities have pursued a series of cases against large developers and their executives as part of efforts to stabilise the sector and enforce financial discipline. The life sentence for Hui marks one of the most severe outcomes so far.
