Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan, once China's richest man, sentenced to life in prison

Hui Ka Yan, the founder of China Evergrande Group and once the country's richest man, has been sentenced to life in prison for fraud and bribery, closing a spectacular fall from the top of the global property industry.

A Chinese court convicted the 67-year-old of overseeing large-scale financial fraud at Evergrande, once one of the world's largest property developers, finding that the company inflated its assets while concealing liabilities that ran to more than $300 billion. Hui and related companies were fined a total of more than $2.3 billion, according to reports.

Hui had pleaded guilty in April to multiple charges tied to his time as chairman, including fraud and the misuse of funds. His two sons, Xu Tenghe and Xu Zhijian, were sentenced alongside senior Evergrande executives and other people linked to the group.

Evergrande came to symbolize the debt-fueled excess of China's property boom. The developer expanded aggressively for years, borrowing heavily to build apartments across hundreds of Chinese cities, before a government clampdown on leverage left it unable to meet its obligations. Its default in 2021 triggered a wider crisis across the sector and rattled global markets.

The company was ordered into liquidation by a Hong Kong court in early 2024, and its shares were later delisted. Regulators and liquidators have since pursued Hui and his family, seeking to claw back dividends and assets accumulated during the boom years.

At his peak, Hui was among the wealthiest people in the world, topping China's rich lists on the strength of Evergrande's soaring valuation and generous dividends. Much of that paper fortune evaporated as the company collapsed, and he had already been detained by authorities in 2023 as the investigation gathered pace.

The sentence marks one of the harshest punishments handed to a Chinese business figure in the fallout from the property crisis, and signals Beijing's determination to hold developers accountable for the debts that destabilized the economy. Hundreds of thousands of homebuyers were left waiting for apartments they had paid for but that were never finished.

Creditors and buyers still nursing losses may see the ruling as a measure of accountability, but it offers little prospect of full recovery, with Evergrande's liabilities dwarfing the assets left to recover. The case stands as the starkest reckoning yet for the executives behind China's property bubble.