Founder of real estate company Evergrande sentenced to life imprisonment

The founder of the collapsed Chinese real estate company Evergrande has been sentenced to life in prison. According to state news agency Xinhua, a people's court in the city of Shenzhen found Xu Jiayin, also known internationally by the Cantonese name Hui Ka Yan, guilty of eight economic crimes. These include, among other things, fraud in raising capital, the fraudulent issuance of securities, embezzlement and bribery.

The court stripped Xu of his political rights for life and ordered the confiscation of all his personal assets. At his trial in April, Xu pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. In further proceedings on the same day, courts in Shenzhen sentenced 56 people close to the company to prison terms ranging from one year and ten months to 18 years.

According to the court's findings, from 2016 to 2021, Xu and the companies continued to falsify financial information on a large scale, inflating assets and concealing liabilities. Evergrande and Xu therefore gained control over financial institutions through bribery and illegally obtained loan and insurance money for the group.

Evergrande grew rapidly with borrowed money during the Chinese real estate boom and was at one point one of the country's largest real estate developers. When Beijing limited borrowing by heavily indebted property developers in 2020, the company's financial problems deepened. At the end of 2021, Evergrande defaulted on international bonds.

In its last semi-annual report to date, the group reported liabilities of 2.39 trillion yuan as of June 30, 2023, the equivalent of around 305 billion euros. Its collapse became a symbol of the real estate crisis in China that continues to this day. In January 2024, a court in Hong Kong ordered the liquidation of the group holding company listed there after no viable debt restructuring was achieved. In August 2025, Evergrande shares were delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.