Evergrande Founder Hui Ka Yan Sentenced to Life, Record Fines Signal Withering of China's Property Boom Era

A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced Hui Ka Yan, once Asia's richest man and the founder of collapsed property developer Evergrande Group, to life in prison, the most severe punishment yet in the country's prolonged real estate crisis.

The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court also ordered the confiscation of all of Hui's personal property and stripped him of political rights for life, according to state media reports. Hui – also known by his mainland Mandarin name Xu Jiayin – pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, including fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, bribery, fraudulently issuing securities, and misuse of funds.

Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan (approximately $1.23 billion to $1.31 billion), while its subsidiary Hengda Real Estate received a separate fine of 7 billion yuan (about $1.04 billion), according to multiple reports. The court called the penalties among the largest ever imposed by a Chinese court on a corporation.

In its ruling, the court said that between 2016 and 2021, Hui "violated state laws by employing methods such as sustained, large-scale financial fraud to inflate assets and conceal liabilities." The verdict stated that the criminal conduct "seriously disrupted the order of the socialist market economy, infringed upon public and private property rights, and undermined the integrity of public officials in the performance of their duties."

More than 50 other individuals linked to Evergrande were also sentenced on Thursday, with prison terms ranging from 20 months to 18 years, according to state media. Indian media outlet The Economic Times reported that those convicted included Hui's two sons, though this detail was not confirmed by other sources.

**A Collapse That Reverberated Across China**

Hui's downfall traces directly to the unraveling of Evergrande, which was once China's largest property developer by sales. The company's troubles became public in 2020 when Beijing introduced strict limits on property developers' debt levels, aiming to cool an overheated market that had come to account for as much as one-quarter to one-third of China's GDP.

Evergrande's business model relied on massive borrowing. When the debt crackdown hit, the company began selling unfinished homes at deep discounts just to make interest payments. By late 2021, it had defaulted on its obligations and collapsed under liabilities of roughly $300-332 billion, making it the most indebted developer on earth. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange delisted the company in 2025 after a court ordered its liquidation in 2024.

The crisis triggered a broader property slump that continues to weigh on the world's second-largest economy. New commercial housing sales across China dropped from about 18.2 trillion yuan in 2021 to 9.7 trillion yuan last year, according to The Economic Times. CNN reported that new home sales in 2025 totaled only 7.3 trillion yuan, compared with 16.2 trillion yuan at the market's peak. Home prices in many regions have fallen roughly 30% from their highs.

Construction stalled on hundreds of developments, leaving millions of families who had prepaid for apartments waiting indefinitely. A study published this year, cited by The Guardian, estimated that the regulatory crackdown led to about $347 billion in sunk costs across the Chinese economy.

**The Rise and Fall of Hui Ka Yan**

Born in the late 1950s in a village in Henan province, Hui was raised by his paternal grandmother. He graduated from high school in 1975, worked on a farm and as a security guard, then passed the college entrance exam on his second attempt in 1978. After studying metallurgy, he worked at a steel mill before moving to Shenzhen in 1992 with less than $3,000.

He founded Evergrande in 1996. By 2017, Forbes estimated his net worth at $42.5-45.3 billion, making him the richest person in Asia. The company at its peak employed about 200,000 people, owned more than 1,300 developments in 280 cities, and generated over $110 billion in annual sales. It also bankrolled a championship soccer club, Guangzhou Evergrande.

In 2018, Hui publicly thanked the Chinese Communist Party, saying it had provided "everything that Evergrande and I have."

**A Landmark for a Crisis Without End**

Analysts view the life sentence as Beijing's effort to draw a definitive line under an era of reckless borrowing and political cronyism that the Evergrande case came to symbolize. The severity of the punishment, combined with the record corporate fines, sends a message that the government will no longer tolerate the model of "borrow big, build fast" that defined a generation of developers.

Yet the broader property crisis shows no signs of resolving. China's economy grew just 4.3% in the most recent quarter, its slowest pace since late 2022, according to The Economic Times. Beijing has issued numerous measures over the past several years to stabilize the market, but as The Guardian noted, "there is no end to the crisis in sight."

Evergrande's liquidators have sold only $255 million worth of assets as of August 2025, against creditors' claims totaling $45 billion, according to a report from Zero Hedge. They are also attempting to freeze Hui's offshore assets and those of his ex-wife, Ding Yumei, who left Hong Kong in 2023 and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Hui, now 64 or 67 depending on the source, has not been seen in public since 2023. The court released photographs showing him in a blue shirt, flanked by two officers, as the sentence was read.