Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire founder of China Evergrande Group — the world's most indebted property developer — has pleaded guilty to charges including fundraising fraud, misuse of funds, and illegally taking public deposits, a court in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen announced. The 67-year-old, who has been held in detention since 2023, "pleaded guilty and expressed remorse" during trial proceedings held on Monday and Tuesday at the Shenzhen Municipal Intermediate People's Court. Verdicts are expected to be handed down at a later date, though no timeline has been set.
Hui and Evergrande also face additional charges of illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities, and bribery — offences that carry maximum penalties of life imprisonment and full confiscation of property. The case marks a dramatic legal culmination to one of the most spectacular corporate collapses in modern financial history. Evergrande, which Hui founded in 1996 and built into China's largest property developer by contracted sales through aggressive borrowing, defaulted on most of its roughly $300 billion in liabilities in 2021. A Hong Kong court subsequently issued a liquidation order in 2024, and the company was removed from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year.
Hui's personal story is one of extraordinary rise and fall. A former steel factory technician from a rural village in Henan province, central China, he built his fortune by selling low-priced homes to an expanding middle class. At his peak in 2017, Forbes estimated his net worth at $45.3 billion, making him the richest person in Asia. By 2023, that figure had collapsed to an estimated $3 billion. Along the way, he diversified into electric vehicles and football — both areas of personal interest to President Xi Jinping — though neither venture proved successful. In 2024, China's securities regulator fined him $6.6 million and imposed a lifetime ban from the securities market after finding that Evergrande had inflated its revenues and committed securities fraud.
The human cost of Evergrande's collapse has been severe. The company's failure to repay billions of dollars' worth of wealth management products — financial instruments sold to ordinary investors — wiped out the savings of many lower- and middle-class households, sparking protests and raising concerns about social stability. Outside mainland China, Evergrande's liquidators have pursued legal action to freeze offshore assets belonging to Hui and his former spouse, seeking to recover some $6 billion in dividends and remuneration paid to him and other former executives.
The trial carries significance well beyond a single corporate scandal. Evergrande's collapse triggered a broader property sector crisis in China that has weighed heavily on economic growth for years — a sector that, at its peak, accounted for roughly a quarter of the country's GDP. The guilty plea signals that Chinese authorities are willing to hold even the wealthiest and most prominent business figures accountable, at least when their failures threaten financial and social stability on a national scale.