The founder of failed Chinese property giant Evergrande has been sentenced to life in prison after his business's collapse rocked the country's housing market.
A court in Shenzhen ruled that Hui Ka Yan, once Asia's richest man, had committed "multiple crimes", including bribery, fraud and embezzlement.
Judges ordered that his personal assets be seized, while Evergrande itself was fined around 15.82bn yuan (£1.73bn) for crimes including falsifying records and concealing debt.
More than 50 other people connected to the firm, including Hui's two sons, Xu Zhi Jian and Xu Teng He, were also sentenced, according to state media reports.
Prosecutors said Hui, who pleaded guilty in April, had acted as the true power behind Evergrande and had broken the law by inflating the company's assets and hiding its debts between 2016 and 2021.
It marks a dramatic rise and fall for a man who grew up in poverty in China's Henan province.
The son of a woodcutter, Mr Hui abandoned a job in the steel industry in 1992 to begin a career in property development, eventually founding Evergrande in 1996.
At its peak, Evergrande commanded a stock market valuation of more than £37bn with more than 1,300 developments across some 280 cities, diversifying into ventures such as football and electric vehicles.
However, much of its rapid expansion was funded with borrowed money. When Beijing tightened rules on property lending in 2020, Evergrande's access to credit dried up.
The business offloaded properties at hefty discounts in an effort to pay off its debts, but defaulted on its loans in 2021. It has since been forced into liquidation.
As one of China's biggest property companies, Evergrande's collapse was widely blamed for triggering a slump in the country's housing market.
The contagion from its collapse spread to other Chinese property companies, which then faced their own financial struggles.
In April, the Shanghai court heard that Evergrande had collected millions from people who had paid in advance to buy new homes.
However, that money was not used to build those properties but was instead used to bankroll other construction projects, leading to hundreds of unfinished sites.
Mr Hui has been held under surveillance by the Chinese authorities since 2023. In 2024, he was banned from China's capital markets for life.
The scandal has also ensnared Evergrande's auditor, PwC, which has been fined by both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong regulators.
Evergrande's liquidators also brought a £6bn negligence claim against PwC and its Chinese and Hong Kong branches in May.
Lawyers for PwC's global business have argued that its Chinese and Hong Kong divisions are separate businesses and it should not be a defendant.
