A Chinese court has sentenced Evergrande founder Xu Jiayin to life imprisonment and imposed a combined fine of 15.82 billion yuan, about $2.4 billion, on the property giant and one of its subsidiaries.
The ruling was delivered on Thursday by the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong province, marking a major legal consequence of the collapse of one of China’s biggest property developers.
Evergrande became a symbol of China’s prolonged real estate boom, expanding rapidly as it promoted home ownership across the country.
However, the company’s access to financing deteriorated after Beijing introduced measures aimed at curbing excessive borrowing and property speculation.
The developer eventually defaulted on its debts in 2021 after struggling to meet obligations to creditors.
Xu, also known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was convicted of several offences, including what the court described as “large-scale financial fraud.”
“Xu Jiayin was sentenced for multiple crimes and fined, received a life sentence, with political rights revoked for life and all his personal property confiscated,” the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong province said in a post on its WeChat account.
The court said the offences occurred between 2016 and 2021, when Evergrande and Xu, who was then the company’s chairman, “violated national laws by engaging in continuous, large-scale financial fraud and other means to inflate assets and conceal liabilities.”
It further alleged that Xu and the company “gained control of financial institutions” through bribery, although the court did not identify the institutions involved.
Xu had pleaded guilty in April to charges that included embezzlement and bribery, according to the court.
Five other senior Evergrande executives were also sentenced on Thursday.
Their prison terms ranged from six to 18 years, with the Shenzhen court saying they were convicted of offences including fraud.
The case comes after years of financial difficulties at Evergrande, whose debt crisis became one of the most prominent examples of the problems facing China’s property sector.
The company’s failure to repay its creditors in 2021 contributed to growing concerns over the financial health of China’s heavily indebted real estate industry and its wider impact on the economy.
The latest sentences bring renewed attention to the regulatory crackdown on financial misconduct and excessive leverage that accompanied Beijing’s efforts to stabilise the property market.
