China jails Evergrande founder for life, fines firm more than US$2bn

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China on Thursday sentenced the founder of embattled property giant Evergrande, Xu Jiayin, to life in prison, and fined the company and an affiliate more than US$2 billion after a high-profile default five years ago.

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Evergrande Group was the face of Chinese real estate, surfing a decades-long property boom as it peddled home-ownership dreams, but its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation.

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The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors.

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On Thursday, a court in south China fined the firm and its real estate arm a total of 15.82 billion yuan ($2.4 billion).

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It sentenced Jiayin, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, to life for a list of crimes including “large-scale financial fraud.”

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“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.

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Between 2016 and 2021, Evergrande and Jiayin, as boss, “violated national laws by engaging in continuous, large-scale financial fraud and other means to inflate assets and conceal liabilities,” the court said.

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It added that the parties “gained control of financial institutions” through bribery, without naming the institutions.

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Jiayin pleaded guilty in April to charges that also included embezzlement and bribery, according to the court at the time.

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Five other senior executives of Evergrande Group were also sentenced on Thursday to prison terms ranging from six to 18 years for crimes including fraud, the Shenzhen court said.

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AFP

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