The founder of Evergrande, the property giant at the centre of China’s housing market slump, has been sentenced to life in prison and had all of his personal property confiscated.
Hui Ka Yan pleaded guilty in April to several charges, including embezzlement of assets and corporate bribery.
Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court also fined his former companies a total of 15.82bn yuan (£1.73bn; $2.35bn) over multiple crimes, including falsifying records and concealing debt.
Hui’s sentencing marks a key moment in the fallout from Evergrande’s collapse, which shook China’s property sector and hit investors and domestic banks hard.
Hui and his businesses “seriously disrupted” the Chinese property market, resulting in significant economic losses, the court said.
Other Evergrande executives, including Hui’s two sons Xu Zhijian and Xu Tenghe, were also sentenced to jail terms ranging from 22 months to 18 years, according to state media.
$300B lost. Meanwhile, in America…
Sure, I can say yay China on this one. Shouldn’t the whole point of being CEO being responsible for the company? How are they just resigning and moving to other companies after committing crimes in “the west”?
We elect the shitiest, most psychopathic members of society to write our laws. Do you really, honestly expect good results from that?
No I do not, it was a rhetorical question.
That’s not the system we live in. It’s only marketed to us as such so we keep allowing it to serve that class.
Other Evergrande executives, including Hui’s two sons Xu Zhijian and Xu Tenghe, were also sentenced to jail terms ranging from 22 months to 18 years, according to state media.
This part is interesting - lends further credence to this being a real punishment and not merely throwing one guy under the bus.
Honestly everyone saw this fall and the pyramic scheme coming. IMO this is just using the CEO as the fall guy and some small 1 year prison vacation for the rest.
It’s better than the West where the entire company would have been bailed out and the CEO gotten a golden parachute, but I’d still like to have seen more. And if anything much earlier before the whole thing collapsed. But at least it’s something.
True. I guess the bar set in capitalist countries is so low, anything remotely competent looks amazing.
