From Asia’s richest man to life in prison: the spectacular fall of Evergrande’s Hui Ka Yan From $45 billion to a prison cellFive years ago, Hui Ka Yan was one of the most powerful businessmen in China and, according to Forbes, the richest man in Asia, with a personal fortune estimated at $45.3 billion. Today, the 67-year-old founder of China Evergrande is facing life in prison. A Chinese court sentenced Hui after he pleaded guilty to eight offences including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery. His personal property is also being confiscated. It is a spectacular end to one of the biggest rags-to-riches stories in modern Chinese business. The property empire that became a monsterHui founded Evergrande in 1996 after growing up in a rural village in central China's Henan province. He transformed the company into China's biggest property developer by contracted sales, building a vast empire of apartments, offices and other developments. But the business relied heavily on debt. And eventually the borrowing became impossible to sustain. Evergrande defaulted on most of its roughly $300 billion in liabilities, helping trigger a property crisis that has continued to weigh heavily on China's economy. The company that once symbolised China's extraordinary property boom became one of the most notorious corporate collapses in the world. Ordinary people paid the priceFor thousands of ordinary Chinese investors, however, Evergrande was not an abstract financial story. The company had sold wealth-management products to investors, many of them relatively modest-income households. When Evergrande collapsed, people saw their investments wiped out and protests erupted. The anger remains. Following Thursday's sentencing, comments from Evergrande homeowners on Chinese social media included a brutally simple question: “What about our money?” That may be the most important question of the entire saga. Hui is going to prison. But prison doesn't rebuild unfinished homes, restore lost savings or magically repay billions of dollars owed to creditors. China sends a messageThe severity of the sentence is nevertheless significant. Chinese authorities have made it clear that the spectacular collapse of Evergrande will not simply be treated as a failed business venture. The court said the crimes involved enormous sums, caused serious economic losses and created significant social harm. Evergrande itself was fined 8.82 billion yuan, around $1.3 billion, while its main subsidiary Hengda was fined another 7 billion yuan. Five other senior executives received prison sentences ranging from six to 18 years, while state media reported that 56 people connected to Evergrande received sentences on Thursday. The message from Beijing is unmistakable: when corporate borrowing becomes a threat to financial and social stability, someone is going to pay. But creditors are still waitingAnd here is where the story becomes rather less satisfying. Evergrande was ordered into liquidation by a Hong Kong court in 2024 and was subsequently delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Yet the liquidation process has moved painfully slowly. As of last August, liquidators had sold only around $255 million in assets, compared with creditor claims of approximately $45 billion. That is an extraordinary mismatch. For creditors, Hui's life sentence doesn't answer the question of how much money they will actually recover. The $6 billion huntOutside mainland China, the battle is continuing. Evergrande's liquidators are attempting to freeze offshore assets belonging to Hui and his former wife while seeking to recover around $6 billion in dividends and remuneration paid to Hui and other former executives. China's securities regulator had already fined Hui $6.6 million in 2024 and permanently barred him from the securities market after finding that Evergrande's flagship unit had inflated earnings and committed securities fraud. The legal reckoning therefore goes well beyond Thursday's prison sentence. A warning for China's property marketEvergrande's collapse has become a symbol of a much bigger problem. For years, China's property sector appeared unstoppable. Developers borrowed heavily, bought land, built at extraordinary speed and sold apartments to a population convinced that property was one of the safest places to put its money. Then the debt machine seized up. Evergrande was the biggest casualty, but it was not the only one. The consequences have spread through China's economy, affecting developers, banks, investors, homeowners and local governments. The property boom helped power China's spectacular economic expansion. Its collapse has become one of the country's biggest economic headaches. The billionaire lessonHui Ka Yan's downfall is therefore about much more than one corrupt businessman. It is the story of what can happen when ambition, cheap credit and endless property speculation collide. In 2017, Hui was sitting on a fortune of more than $45 billion and appeared to have conquered China's property market. Less than a decade later, Evergrande is in liquidation, creditors are fighting over scraps, ordinary investors are asking where their money went — and its founder is facing the rest of his life behind bars. The fortune disappeared. The property empire collapsed. The creditors are still waiting. And Hui Ka Yan has gone from being Asia's richest man to one of China's most spectacular corporate prisoners. That is one hell of a property bubble. SOURCE
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