Chinese authorities have detained some staff of China Evergrande Group’s money management business, a sign that the saga around the defaulted developer at the heart of the nation’s property crisis has entered a new phase involving the criminal justice system.

Police in the southern city of Shenzhen said the actions were taken “recently” in a statement on social media on Saturday night. They only identified one of the detainees by the last name Du. No charges were disclosed and the statement didn’t say how many people were in custody.

Evergrande Financial Wealth Management, based in Shenzhen, is a wholly owned Evergrande unit established in 2015. The firm’s general manager is Du Liang, according to his LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg News wasn’t able to verify that he is among the detainees.

Evergrande sits at the centre of a credit crisis that has rippled through China’s real estate sector and curtailed growth in the world’s second-largest economy. The debt-laden developer has offloaded a range of assets, including trophy land parcels and stakes in other financial institutions.