Evergrande’s Xu Jiayin: From real estate tycoon to life in prison

Filed 6d ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Decline

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Scotted400 · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A Shenzhen court sentenced Xu Jiayin, the disgraced founder of Evergrande, to life in prison Thursday on fraud, bribery and embezzlement charges tied to his leadership of what was once China's largest property developer. The company defaulted in 2021, helping trigger the housing slump still gripping China, and was fined more than $2 billion alongside an affiliate.

Xu rose from rural poverty in Henan to become mainland China's richest man, built Evergrande into a real-estate juggernaut, bought a football club he knew nothing about, and became famous for his taste in Hermès. He credited his success to education and the Communist Party; less charitably, observers noted his useful connections, including to the brother of a former premier.

His fortune collapsed from $42 billion in 2017 to $1.8 billion by 2023, around the time he vanished from public view for nearly three years. He resurfaced this year to plead guilty and offer what the court described as remorse.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A man who once said everything he had was given by the Party and the state has now had a considerable amount of it taken back by the same apparatus, which is either poetic justice or just how the arrangement always worked. Either way, the belt jokes were funnier when he still had freedom to lose.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Decline · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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