Chinese property giant Evergrande fined US$577 million for fraudulent bond issuance

BEIJING: China's deeply indebted property giant Evergrande has been fined 4.18 billion yuan (US$577.1 million) for fraudulent business practices, Beijing's financial regulatory body said Friday (May 31).

«Between 2019 and 2020, Evergrande Real Estate falsely increased its revenue and profit by prematurely recognising revenue, resulting in the fraudulent issuance of bonds publicly offered on the exchange market,» the China Securities Regulatory Commission said in a statement.

The regulator also fined Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan 47 million yuan and banned him from re-entering the securities market for life, the statement said.

Evergrande is the world's most indebted developer, with more than US$300 billion in total liabilities. 

It was ordered to be liquidated by a Hong Kong court earlier this year for not being able to deliver a debt restructuring plan more than two years after it defaulted on offshore note payments.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that China is also weighing a record fine of at least 1 billion yuan for auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), after a Chinese regulator found earlier this year that Evergrande had overstated revenue at its main unit Hengda by 564 billion yuan in the two years through 2020.

Evergrande was once China's biggest real estate firm, a powerhouse in a sector that helped propel the country's rapid economic growth during recent decades.

But its spiralling debt became emblematic of a prolonged crisis in China's real estate sector.

Struggling to repay creditors for years, it defaulted in 2021.