Liquidators and courts are going after Hui’s fortune
In announcing the lifetime prison sentence for Hui, who is also known as Xu Jiayin and was at one time said to be China’s richest man, the Shenzhen court ordered that his personal assets be confiscated.
Hong Kong-based liquidators from the restructuring firm Alvarez and Marsal have sought to locate and recover the assets of Evergrande, Hui and others tied to the company. A Hong Kong judge earlier prohibited Hui from disposing of his worldwide assets of some USD 7.7 billion.
The liquidators also have been seeking USD 8.4 billion from accounting firm PwC over its role in auditing Evergrande’s financial statements before its collapse.
Investigations by authorities in Hong Kong and mainland China found Evergrande had overstated its revenues by roughly USD 80 billion over 2019 and 2020 by manipulating financial data.
In 2024, mainland authorities fined PwC, one of the world’s largest accounting firms, around USD 62 million over its Evergrande audits. Hong Kong authorities said in April that PwC was paying a separate USD 166 million in fines and compensation.
Evergrande’s creditors will likely recover a fraction of what’s owed.
Wong of Fortune Ark Restructuring expects that while the amounts might be large, they will likely figure in the single digit percentages of Evergrande’s liabilities.