(Yicai Global) Sept. 5 -- Beleaguered Sinic Holdings, which is the largest private real estate developer in China's eastern Jiangxi province, has suffered further ignominy as a Chinese court recently deemed it to be of an unspecified address.

“As your whereabouts are unknown, the court is hereby informing you through public media to come and collect the court’s ruling on a contract dispute. If you fail to collect the document within 30 days, the ruling will take effect,” the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People’s Court said at the end of last month.

Sinic, which is currently embroiled in 324 lawsuits and is the defendant in nearly 90 percent of them, together with four of its affiliates are being sued by financial services firm JIIC Trust over a disagreement about a loan, Yicai Global learned from corporate registration data.

‘Whereabouts unknown’ usually means that the court cannot get in touch with the defendant either using the contact information provided by the plaintiff or from the data in its system, a lawyer told Yicai Global. If the defendant can contact the court in time, the court will usually revoke the public announcement and deliver the ruling in a regular way.

Sinic has no idea why the court said its ‘location is unknown’ because its office address is still in Hongqiao district in Shanghai and has not changed, a company source told Yicai Global.

Sinic, which has been badly hit by the cooling real estate market and a tighter financing environment, is being bombarded by lawsuits, almost half of which revolve around creditors chasing funds, housing pre-sale contracts and inter-bank loans. The firm has been ordered to pay compensation of around CNY4 billion (CNY578.1 million) in 27 separate court rulings, according to corporate data platform Qichacha.

Since last year, it has been slapped with seven restrictions on high spending and both the firm and its legal representative are blacklisted. Last month, a creditor applied to the high court in Hong Kong to liquidate Sinic due to debt defaults.

Sinic suspended trading on the Hong Kong bourse nearly one year ago. If its stock remains inactive for 18 months, it will be kicked off the exchange. The firm has yet to release its financial report for last year and last week it said that it will publish its first-half results later than scheduled.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor