A Shenzhen court just handed Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan, once China's richest man, one of the harshest corporate fraud sentences in recent memory.

In a first instance ruling, the court found that from 2016 to 2021 he ran a systematic scheme to inflate assets and hide debt across Evergrande Group and Evergrande Real Estate.

The convictions: illegal public fundraising, fundraising fraud, fraudulent securities issuance, false disclosure, illegal loans, and corporate bribery, on top of embezzling company funds disguised as dividends.

His sentence: life in prison, lifetime loss of political rights, and confiscation of every asset he owns.

Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan, about 1.2 billion dollars. Evergrande Real Estate was fined 7 billion yuan, about 980 million dollars.

56 more executives, including two of his sons, were sentenced separately, from under two years to eighteen.