The founder of China Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted property developer, pleaded guilty to charges including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud and illegally taking public deposits, a court in China’s southern city of Shenzhen said.
The company has defaulted since 2021 on most of its $300 billion in liabilities as well as billions of dollars of wealth management product payments, in troubles emblematic of China’s property sector woes that have long dragged on economic growth.
Founder Hui Ka Yan “pleaded guilty and expressed remorse” in trial proceedings on Monday and Tuesday against him and Evergrande, the court said in a posting on its official Wechat account.
The liquidators of Evergrande declined to comment on the case.
Reuters was unable to seek comment from Hui, who has not been seen in public since Chinese authorities detained him in 2023, following the default of Evergrande.
In 2024, China’s securities regulator fined Hui $6.6 million and barred him from the securities market for life, after finding Evergrande’s flagship unit had inflated earnings and committed securities fraud.
Hui and the company also face charges of illegally extending loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery by units, the the Shenzhen Municipal Intermediate People’s Court added, with verdicts to be handed down later, though it did not set a date.
(Reporting by Clare Jim in Hong Kong and Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Jamie Freed and Clarence Fernandez)
