Hui Ka Yan, the founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande, has been sentenced to life in prison and stripped of all his personal property after pleading guilty to fraud. Once ranked by Forbes as China's richest person, with a net worth of $42.5bn in 2017, Hui's conviction marks the culmination of a debt crisis at his company that came to symbolise the broader troubles engulfing China's property sector and, by extension, its wider economy.

Hui, 67, admitted eight charges in April, including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery. A Shenzhen court found that between 2016 and 2021 he had orchestrated "sustained, large-scale financial fraud" to inflate assets and conceal liabilities, and fined Evergrande Group 8.8bn yuan (£950m) and its property arm a further 7bn yuan. More than 50 other individuals linked to the firm received sentences ranging from 20 months to 18 years. Evergrande, which has defaulted on most of its $300bn in liabilities and delisted from Hong Kong's stock exchange last year, was central to a sector-wide crisis triggered by 2020 government debt curbs, which one study estimates cost the Chinese economy $347bn.