HONG KONG, Aug 20 (Reuters) – The billionaire founder of China Evergrande Group, the world’s most-indebted property developer, was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday by a Chinese court, which ordered all his personal property confiscated.
Hui Ka Yan pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud and illegally taking public deposits.
Evergrande, once China’s premier developer, has defaulted since 2021 on most of its $300 billion in liabilities, its troubles emblematic of a crisis in the property sector that has long dragged on the world’s second-biggest economy.
Hui’s sentence ends his rags-to-riches story but is unlikely to bring much solace to Evergrande’s domestic and foreign creditors.
In addition to Hui’s sentence, the court in the southern city of Shenzhen said in a statement it had fined Evergrande 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion) and its main subsidiary Hengda Real Estate 7 billion yuan, and sentenced five other senior executives to fines and prison terms ranging from six to 18 years.
($1 = 6.7231 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom and Clare Jim in Hong Kong; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and William Mallard)
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