HONG KONG -- China's securities watchdog has accused a core unit of China Evergrande Group of inflating revenue by nearly $80 billion over two years before the developer defaulted on its debt.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission has imposed a fine of 4.2 billion yuan ($580 million) on core Evergrande unit Hengda Real Estate for inflating revenue in 2019 and 2020 by a total of 564.1 billion yuan, Hengda said in an exchange filing late Monday.
Hengda cited the inflated revenue figure in its attempts to sell 20.8 billion yuan worth of bonds in 2020 and 2021, an act the regulator said constituted financial fraud. The inflated revenue made up over 60% of its stated profit in 2019 and over 86% in 2020.
The Chinese regulator has also banned Xu Jiayin, the China Evergrande Group founder also known as Hui Ka-yan, from the securities markets for life, saying his involvement in the decision and execution of the falsification were "extremely horrendous acts." The same punishment was applied to Xia Haijun, the ex-chief executive officer of Evergrande.
Hui has been fined 47 million yuan and Xia 15 million yuan.
Four other senior management who approved the financial reports in 2019 and 2020 were penalized with fines. One more executive was fined for giving approval to onshore bonds in 2020.
The filing comes about two months after a Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande into liquidation. The group has more than $300 billion in liabilities. After the liquidation order, Evergrande CEO Siu Shawn said the liquidation will not affect the group's onshore or offshore operations.
In January 2023, PwC resigned as the auditor of the Hong Kong-listed entity of Evergrande, citing different views over financial disclosures on Evergrande's new energy vehicle arm and the property services unit. The group at the time was being investigated by Hong Kong audit authorities over its 2020 annual reports. In April 2023, PwC's mainland affiliate, PwC Zhongtian, resigned as the auditor of Hengda.
GMT Research, a Hong Kong-based accounting investigation company, in December, said, "There were never any profits" at Evergrande. The Chinese developer disputed the report and said it was "without basis."
Hui has been "subject to mandatory measures" in the mainland after he was suspected of committing crimes, according to a company filing by Evergrande in late September. No details of those measures were given.