Dolce Vita Evergrande, He Goes Bankrupt and She Consoles Herself with 33 Houses in London

BEIJING – Shopping spree for the (former) Mrs Evergrande . Tens of millions of pounds in luxury apartments in London . Expenditures made nine months after the first default of the company, sunk under a mountain of debt. Ding Yumei, ex-wife of Hui Ka Yan - the boss of Evergrande, the real estate giant that has become the symbol of the Chinese real estate crisis - in September 2022 purchased 33 luxury apartments in the Thames City complex in the British capital for a value of 49.8 million pounds . The reconstruction of the timing was made by the Bloomberg agency, based on English land registry records. September 2022 means nine months after the first default declared by the Chinese brick giant.

An inexperienced housewife

The story has come to light as the company’s liquidators are trying to recover money from her as well to repay creditors. Although the woman’s lawyers reiterated in March this year that Ding was neither an employee nor a manager of the company and that she had no responsibility for Evergrande’s financial difficulties — “ she is just a housewife with no accounting experience ,” her lawyer said — Evergrande’s liquidators think otherwise. In July last year, courts in Hong Kong and London issued global asset-freezing orders against Ding, part of a broader effort to recoup $6 billion from her, Hui and former Evergrande executives to repay creditors after the debt-ridden company was forced into liquidation in 2024. Ding has not been listed as Hui’s wife since August 2023 in company records (she is officially an “independent third party,” according to the two-year-old filing, and had a 5.99% stake in Evergrande, according to those 2023 filings), though it’s unclear when the couple divorced. “Evergrande’s dividends, totaling more than $7 billion, have supported the couple’s lavish lifestyle,” Bloomberg reported in October. “Documents filed in the UK court show that Ding lives in one of the flats in Thames City and has about $4 million in her bank account at Barclays. She is allowed to spend up to £20,000 a month, while liquidators seek to recover about $360 million in company dividends paid to her.”

The Safe in the Virgin Islands

The London properties were purchased through five British Virgin Islands companies. They join a record-breaking mansion in the heart of London purchased in 2020 and other properties in Vancouver, Canada. “Ding has been asked to provide a detailed asset declaration to the liquidators in Hong Kong, but she has delayed the process by filing a gag order and asking for further technical clarifications. This underscores the difficulties liquidators face in gaining a full view of the assets held by Hui and his associates,” Bloomberg continues. And to get their hands on them. The London Thames City project is being developed by Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. and CC Land Holdings Ltd., which is managed by Cheung Chung Kiu, Hui Ka Yan’s poker partner. Meanwhile, in the meantime, Hui’s exact whereabouts are unknown. In 2023, he was picked up by authorities and placed “under surveillance” by police. In September last year, Reuters reported that Evergrande’s boss had been transferred to a “special detention center” in the city of Shenzhen. Burdened by nearly $330 billion in liabilities, Evergrande defaulted on its dollar-denominated bonds in December 2021, subsequently triggering a real estate crisis that has contributed to China’s slowdown in growth.