Hui Ka Yan, the once-Asia's richest man and founder of the now-collapsed China Evergrande Group, has been sentenced to life in prison by a court in Shenzhen. The conviction, delivered five years after the property giant's default sent shockwaves through China's economy, includes the confiscation of all his personal property.
The 67-year-old businessman, who had not been seen publicly since his detention by Chinese authorities in 2023, pleaded guilty in April to a litany of charges. These include misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, fraudulently issuing securities, illegally extending loans, and bribery.
From Humble Beginnings to Property Empire
Hui Ka Yan's journey is a dramatic rags-to-riches story. Raised by his grandmother in a rural village in Henan province, he began his career as a steel technician. He later founded Evergrande, building it into China's premier property developer through an aggressive strategy of heavy borrowing for land purchases and selling homes with lower margins for rapid turnover.
By 2020, Evergrande's annual sales soared to 700 billion yuan (approximately $100 billion). Hui's personal wealth peaked at an estimated $45.3 billion in 2017, earning him the title of Asia's richest person, according to Forbes. However, by 2023, his fortune had plummeted to around $3 billion.
The Collapse of a Giant
Evergrande eventually defaulted on most of its staggering $300 billion in liabilities, becoming the most prominent symbol of China's ongoing property crisis. A Hong Kong court ordered the company's liquidation in 2024, and it was subsequently delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The liquidation process has been slow, with only about $255 million in assets sold as of August last year, against creditor claims totaling $45 billion. Liquidators are also actively pursuing Hui and his former spouse to recover $6 billion in dividends and remuneration paid to the founder and other former executives.
Prior to this life sentence, Hui had already faced a $6.6 million fine from China's securities regulator in 2024 and a lifetime ban from the securities market. This was in response to findings that Evergrande's flagship unit had inflated earnings and committed securities fraud.
Throughout his rise, Hui often credited China's economic reforms, the Communist Party, and society for his success, a sentiment expressed as recently as 2018.