A court has ordered Chinese construction tycoon Yan Jiehe, beset by creditors' demands for repayment of loans, to avoid extravagant spending and not use luxury cars, a court official said Thursday.

Yan, head of privately held China Pacific Construction Group, was sued in the eastern city of Nanjing after one of his group companies failed to fully pay back 5 million yuan (US$632,000; euro504,000) in loans from the Bank of China, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily reported.

An official at the Nanjing Intermediate People's Court, who like many Chinese bureaucrats refused to give his name, confirmed the report but would not comment further.

Calls to Yan's Nanjing-based company headquarters rang unanswered Thursday.

Other local media reports said Yan was also prohibited from leaving the country.

According to the Beijing-backed newspaper Wen Wei Po, the Nanjing court has also ordered Yan to document the sources for his wealth. The court apparently has not made a final ruling in the case.

According to earlier reports, Yan is involved in four debt cases involving a total of 32 million yuan (US$4 million; euro3.2 million). The Nanjing court has also frozen the assets of a dozen real estate companies owned by Yan.

Yan was listed 16th on a list of China's wealthiest individuals, published by Shanghai-based researcher Rupert Hoogewerf, with assets worth US$950 million (euro757 million). That was down from US$1.6 billion in 2005, when he ranked second on the list.

Yan built his fortune on capturing contracts for construction projects in inland China. His flagship company has been reported to be the largest private employer in the country, with 100,000 workers.

The construction sector is still booming with the economy growing at an annual pace of more than 10 percent a year. But state planners have been cracking down on the types of local infrastructural construction that is China Pacific's specialty, warning against excess investment in such projects.