Ex-Evergrande bigwig under investigation

Staff reporter and Reuters

China's anti-corruption watchdog said Jiang Liming, a former official of China's banking regulator and a former vice president at China Evergrande (3333), is under investigation.

Jiang is suspected of a "serious breach of discipline and the law," according to an announcement by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Jiang joined Evergrande after leaving the China Banking Regulatory Commission in 2016. She was the former head of rural, small, and medium-sized banks at CBRC and has worked for the People's Bank of China from 1985 to 2003.

This came as the local government in Hainan changed its decision and confiscated 39 buildings developed by Evergrande instead of ordering the embattled developer to demolish them.

Last year, Evergrande said it received an order from authorities at Danzhou city in Hainan province telling it to demolish 39 under-construction buildings at the Ocean Flower Island project.

Local media reported earlier that the buildings - stretched over 435,000 square meters - needed to be demolished for illegal construction and environmental violations.

Evergrande applied for an administrative review in January this year and the Danzhou government announced to confiscate the buildings instead of demolishing them, adding that the legitimate rights and interests of all parties will be protected in accordance with the law, local state-owned newspaper the Hainan Daily reported yesterday.

Meanwhile, a unit of Evergrande said construction work has resumed at 95 percent of Evergrande's projects across the country as of late March.

Evergrande has resumed work at 734 developments in all of China as of March 27, including 424 projects recovering to normal construction levels, according to a post on Saturday on the official WeChat of the developer's Pearl River Delta business unit. The post did not give a figure for Evergrande's total number of developments.

Evergrande will "continue to maintain the normal construction of the projects in order to deliver the buildings to the owners with guaranteed quality and quantity at all costs," according to the post.

Company chairman Hui Kayan has pledged multiple times since 2021 that the company would resume construction work at full steam to ensure home deliveries.

Hui told staff in February that the company aimed to deliver 600,000 apartments in 2022, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter and media reports.