Friday, August 21, 2026 - Chinese property tycoon Hui Ka Yan, the founder of troubled real estate giant Evergrande, has been handed a life sentence, while the companies linked to the group have been ordered to pay combined fines exceeding $2 billion.
A court in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen announced
the ruling on Thursday, August 20.
Evergrande Group was the face of Chinese real estate,
surfing a decades-long property boom as it peddled home-ownership dreams, but
its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs
on excessive borrowing and speculation.
The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay
creditors.
On Thursday, a court in south China fined the firm and its
real estate arm a total of 15.82 billion yuan ($2.4 billion).
It sentenced founder Xu Jiayin, known as Hui Ka Yan in
Cantonese, to life for a list of crimes including "large-scale financial
fraud".
"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 province said in a post on its WeChat account.
Between 2016 and 2021, Evergrande and Xu as boss
"violated national laws by engaging in continuous, large-scale financial
fraud and other means to inflate assets and conceal liabilities", the
court said.
It added that the parties "gained control of financial
institutions" through bribery, without naming the institutions.
Xu pleaded guilty in April to charges that also included
embezzlement and bribery, according to the court at the time.
Five other senior executives of Evergrande Group were also
sentenced Thursday to prison terms ranging from six to 18 years for crimes
including fraud, the Shenzhen court said.
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