China Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan sentenced to life in prison

HONG KONG: The billionaire founder of China Evergrande Group, the world's most-indebted property developer, was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday (Aug 20) by a Chinese court, which ordered all his personal property confiscated.Hui Ka Yan pleaded guilty in April to eight charges, including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud and illegally taking public deposits.Evergrande, once China's premier developer, has defaulted since 2021 on most of its US$300 billion in liabilities, its troubles emblematic of a crisis in the property sector that has long dragged on the world's second-biggest economy.Hui's sentence ends his rags-to-riches story but is unlikely to bring much solace to Evergrande's domestic and foreign creditors.In addition to Hui's sentence, the court in the southern city of Shen