Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire founder of collapsed property giant China Evergrande Group, has been sentenced to life imprisonment after a Chinese court found him guilty of multiple financial crimes, bringing one of the country’s most dramatic corporate downfalls to a decisive legal conclusion.
The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court handed down the sentence on August 20, 2026, following a case involving large-scale financial fraud, illegal fundraising, misuse of funds and bribery. Hui, 67, who is also known by his Mandarin name Xu Jiayin, had pleaded guilty in April to eight charges. The court also ordered the confiscation of all his personal property and stripped him of his political rights for life.
Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan ($1.3 billion), while its major property unit, Hengda Real Estate, was fined another 7 billion yuan, taking the combined corporate penalties to almost 16 billion yuan, or more than $2 billion.
From Property Billionaire to Prison
Hui’s conviction marks an extraordinary reversal for a businessman who once stood at the top of China’s corporate elite. Born into a poor rural family in Henan province, Hui founded Evergrande in 1996 and transformed it into one of China’s largest property developers during the country’s decades-long real estate boom.
Evergrande expanded aggressively across China, building enormous residential developments while branching into businesses including electric vehicles, finance, tourism and even football. Hui’s fortune grew alongside the company. At his peak, he was ranked among Asia’s richest people, with his wealth estimated at more than $40 billion.
But Evergrande’s rapid expansion depended heavily on borrowing. Its business model began to unravel after Beijing introduced tighter restrictions on highly indebted property developers in 2020. By 2021, Evergrande was struggling to repay creditors and eventually defaulted, burdened by liabilities exceeding $300 billion.
The collapse became one of the biggest symbols of China’s property crisis, leaving creditors facing huge losses and many homebuyers waiting for apartments they had already paid for. Evergrande was eventually ordered into liquidation by a Hong Kong court in 2024 and was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2025.
Why Was Hui Ka Yan Sentenced?
According to the Shenzhen court, Hui and Evergrande were involved in sustained, large-scale financial misconduct between 2016 and 2021, including artificially inflating assets and concealing liabilities. Prosecutors accused Hui of using his position at the top of the company to oversee financial fraud and misappropriate corporate assets.
The charges included illegally taking public deposits, fundraising fraud, misuse of funds, fraudulent securities issuance and bribery. The court said the scale of the offences was exceptionally large and that the activities caused severe economic losses and social harm.
The case also extended far beyond Hui himself. Chinese authorities sentenced 56 people connected with the Evergrande case, including Hui’s two sons and several senior executives. Prison terms for other defendants ranged from about 22 months to 18 years.
Hui had already faced regulatory punishment before the criminal verdict. In 2024, Chinese regulators fined him and banned him from the country’s securities market for life over allegations that Evergrande’s property arm had massively overstated revenue.
Reaction and Wider Impact
The life sentence attracted widespread attention in China because Hui had once represented the extraordinary wealth generated during the country’s property boom. Images released around the verdict showing an older, grey-haired Hui in court circulated widely online, sharply contrasting with earlier photographs of the billionaire at the height of his wealth and political influence.
For Evergrande’s creditors and former customers, however, the verdict does not automatically recover the enormous sums lost in the company’s collapse. Liquidators have continued efforts to locate and recover assets as creditors seek compensation. Analysts also see the case as symbolic of a broader transformation in China’s real estate industry. Edward Chan of S&P Global Ratings said Evergrande’s 2021 financial crisis had effectively marked the end of the sector’s old model based on high debt, high leverage and high asset turnover. He said Hui’s sentencing itself was unlikely to have a further major impact on China’s property market.
Hui’s life sentence therefore closes a remarkable chapter in China’s corporate history: a businessman who rose from rural poverty to become one of Asia’s richest men, built a vast property empire during China’s economic boom, and ultimately became the most prominent individual held responsible for the excesses surrounding Evergrande’s spectacular collapse.
