{"id":865117,"date":"2026-08-20T15:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865117\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T15:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:22:11","slug":"founder-of-chinas-evergrande-jailed-for-life-after-pleading-guilty-to-fraud-evergrande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865117\/","title":{"rendered":"Founder of China\u2019s Evergrande jailed for life after pleading guilty to fraud | Evergrande"},"content":{"rendered":"

The founder of Evergrande<\/a>, one of China\u2019s largest property developers, has been sentenced to life in prison and had all of his personal property confiscated.<\/p>\n

Hui Ka Yan, 67 and once named by Forbes as China\u2019s richest man, with a net worth of $42.5bn (\u00a331.2bn) in 2017, pleaded guilty<\/a> in April to eight charges.<\/p>\n

These included misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery.<\/p>\n

The company Hui founded, Evergrande Group, was fined 8.8bn yuan (\u00a3950m), while its property arm was fined 7bn yuan, according to Chinese state media.<\/p>\n

Hui\u2019s convictions relate to a debt crisis at Evergrande, which shook China<\/a> at a time when the government had been trying to make the world\u2019s second-largest economy less reliant on the real estate sector.<\/p>\n

Evergrande, which delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange<\/a> last year, has defaulted on most of its $300bn \u200bin liabilities.<\/p>\n

Shenzhen intermediate people\u2019s court in southern China said in its ruling that between 2016 and 2021, Hui \u201cviolated state laws by employing methods such as sustained, large-scale financial fraud to inflate assets and conceal liabilities\u201d.<\/p>\n

It said Hui\u2019s actions had \u201cseverely disrupted the order of the socialist market economy\u201d and \u201ccaused exceptionally heavy economic losses\u201d.<\/p>\n

More than 50 individuals linked to Evergrande were also sentenced on Thursday, with prison terms ranging from 20 months to 18 years.<\/p>\n

Evergrande\u2019s troubles began in 2020 when the Chinese government introduced regulations limiting the amount of debt that property companies could hold. This torpedoed the debt-fuelled real estate sector, which has traditionally accounted for between one-quarter and one-third of China\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n

Construction stalled on hundreds of property developments as companies scrambled for cash and struggled to pay suppliers amid weak demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. A study<\/a> published this year estimated that the regulatory crackdown led to about $347bn in sunk costs across the Chinese economy.<\/p>\n

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Hui\u2019s company was at the centre of this crisis. Evergrande\u2019s implosion has been seen as a symbol for the wider troubles in the property sector, which still weighs heavily on the Chinese economy.<\/p>\n

Born to a poor family in rural Henan province, Hui was raised by his grandmother before setting up Evergrande in 1996.<\/p>\n

In 2018 he thanked the Chinese Communist party for providing \u201ceverything that Evergrande and I have\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The founder of Evergrande, one of China\u2019s largest property developers, has been sentenced to life in prison and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-865117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}