China Sentences Evergrande Founder to Life in Prison, Confiscates Property

A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced Xu Jiayin, founder of China Evergrande Group, to life in prison.

The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court ordered all of Xu's personal property confiscated after convicting him of multiple crimes. The court also fined Evergrande Group 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion) and its real estate unit, Evergrande Real Estate Group, 7 billion yuan ($1.04 billion). The total fines imposed on the companies amount to approximately $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion.

Xu, also known as Hui Ka Yan, pleaded guilty in April to charges including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities, and bribery. The court stated Xu and Evergrande engaged in large-scale financial fraud, inflating assets and concealing liabilities between 2016 and 2021. They also gained control of financial institutions through bribery.

Several other senior Evergrande executives, including Xu's two sons Xu Zhijian and Xu Tenghe, received prison terms ranging from 22 months to 18 years for crimes including fraud. Evergrande, founded in 1996, was once the world's most-indebted property developer, defaulting on most of its $300 billion in liabilities in 2021 following a 2020 crackdown on excessive borrowing in the real estate industry.

The company was ordered to liquidate its assets in 2024 and delisted in 2025. Evergrande's liquidators declined to comment on the sentence, and legal representatives for Xu could not be reached.