He was the only director of a company that owned a $100 million house in the hills above Hong Kong island, before stepping down recently, according to company registry filings.

His companies bought luxurious mansions, including one in Sydney that had to be sold in 2015 after the Australian government found the purchase violated foreign investment rules.

His majority holding in Evergrande meant he benefited generously from dividends - pocketing $8 billion alone since 2011, according to Bloomberg calculations. His personal fortune swelled to $42 billion at its peak in 2017. He vowed to eclipse Elon Musk with the “most powerful new energy automobile company in the world.” As the company grew, so did Hui’s wealth. Hui didn’t stop at property, accruing interests in soccer and volleyball teams, bottled water, online entertainment, banking and insurance. He founded Evergrande in 1996 in the southern city of Guangzhou, and over the next decades built the firm into a colossus that controlled land five times the size of Manhattan. The group now faces at the minimum a debt restructuring, which could be China’s largest ever. Evergrande and its affiliated companies were built through an aggressive mix of dollar debt issuance, share sales, bank loans and shadow financing - funding avenues that have been all but cut off. Hui’s empire is turning into one of the biggest victims of President Xi Jinping’s efforts to curb the debt-fueled excesses of conglomerates and defuse risks in the nation’s housing market. Other heads of failed companies have met with worse fates, from arrest to execution. One of his allies and fellow billionaire Zhang Jindong lost control of the retail arm of his Suning conglomerate when it received a state-backed bailout in July - partly because he helped Hui out during a tight spot. “In the situation he’s in now, I don’t think any political connections will come to his rescue.” What happens to Hui is open to question, including whether he will retain ownership of his empire.

“There’s no interest to bail him out,” said Desmond Shum, whose book about his dealings with China’s political elites, “Red Roulette,” described how he once went shopping with Hui for a superyacht.

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