HONG KONG/SHENZHEN, China: The founder of China Evergrande Group, the world's most heavily indebted property developer, was sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court on Thursday.

The sentence came five years after the company's collapse caused major damage to China's economy and financial markets.

Hui Ka Yan, once Asia's richest man, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges. They included misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, illegally accepting public deposits, illegally providing loans, fraudulently issuing securities and bribery.

Evergrande was once one of China's leading property developers. The company has defaulted on most of its liabilities, which total about US$300 billion. Its financial problems became a major symbol of China's long-running property crisis, which has continued to weigh on the world's second-largest economy.

The sentence was handed down in the southern city of Shenzhen and included the confiscation of all of Hui's personal property. It ended his rise from poverty to becoming one of Asia's richest businessmen. However, the punishment is unlikely to provide much relief to Evergrande's creditors in China and other countries.

Evergrande's liquidators declined to comment on the sentence. Reuters was unable to contact Hui's legal representatives. Hui had not been seen in public since Chinese authorities detained him in 2023 after Evergrande defaulted on its debts.

Court-released photographs showed the 67-year-old Hui with grey hair standing between two officers. He was wearing a long-sleeved navy blue collared shirt as the court announced his sentence.

"The criminal acts of Evergrande Group, Hengda Real Estate, and Hui Ka Yan ... involved particularly huge amounts and egregious circumstances, caused particularly significant economic losses and caused particularly serious social harm, and should be severely punished according to law," the court said.

Some Evergrande homeowners reacted to the sentence in a social media group. Their comments showed anger and frustration over the losses they had suffered. They questioned whether Hui's imprisonment would protect him, said ordinary citizens had paid the price, and asked what would happen to their money.

The court also fined Evergrande 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion). Its main subsidiary, Hengda Real Estate, was fined seven billion yuan. Five other senior executives were given prison sentences ranging from six to 18 years and were also fined.

State media CCTV reported that 56 people linked to Evergrande, apart from Hui, were sentenced on Thursday.

Evergrande's failure to repay billions of dollars owed through wealth-management products led to protests. The demonstrations raised concerns about social stability after ordinary investors, many of them lower-income, lost their investments.

Hui was a former steel technician whom his grandmother raised in a rural village in central China's Henan province. He founded Evergrande in 1996 and built it into China's largest property developer by contracted sales. The company expanded rapidly by taking on large amounts of debt.

In 2017, Forbes estimated Hui's wealth at $45.3 billion, making him the richest person in Asia at the time.

A Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande to be liquidated in 2024. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange removed the company's shares from its listing last year, ending its dramatic rise and collapse.

According to Evergrande's liquidators, the liquidation process has moved extremely slowly. By last August, only about $255 million worth of assets had been sold, while creditors had filed claims totaling $45 billion.

Outside mainland China, the liquidators are also fighting legal battles to freeze offshore assets belonging to Hui and his former wife. They are trying to recover about $6 billion in dividends and payments made to the founder and other former senior executives.

In 2024, China's securities regulator fined Hui $6.6 million and permanently banned him from participating in the securities market. The regulator had found that Evergrande's main listed unit had falsely increased its reported earnings and committed securities fraud.