EX-SCHALKE star Hiannick Kamba has gone on trial – accused of faking his own DEATH to land a £1million insurance payout.
And the former defender, 35, could receive a ten-year prison sentence if found guilty of fraud.
Kamba and his wife Christina, 41, are appearing before a German court in Essen this week.
The footballer came through Schalke’s academy, playing alongside future stars such as Manuel Neuer and Benedikt Howedes.
He went on to join lower-league sides SV Zweckel and VfB Huls.
Kamba was reported to have been killed in a car crash in his native Congo in 2016.
However, he resurfaced in Germany last year, working as a chemical technician for a company that previously employed him in 2013.
Essen court spokesman Thomas Kliegel told Bild newspaper that the Kambas had taken out a life insurance policy for Hiannick.
The official said Christina had cashed it in for £1m after producing documentary proof of her husband’s death.
But Kliegel added: “The defendant turned up at the German Embassy in Kinshasa two years later, claiming he had been kidnapped.”
Christina’s lawyer Michael Wolff insisted she had not organised a scam, insisting she was shocked both by reports of Hiannick’s death and by news he was in fact still alive.
Wolff said: “We are convinced that by the end of the trial both the prosecutors and the court will be convinced of my client’s innocence.
“The money is still available, and it has since been seized. It has been invested in a house and put into accounts.”
Christina told Bild: “I have nothing to do with any deception. The news of Hiannick’s death shocked me as much as anyone else.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
