Former Schalke footballer Hiannik Kamba and his wife Christina were sentenced in Essen to three years and ten months in a fraud case for faking the death of a player.
The athlete was born in Congo, but together with his parents fled the country in 1986 to Germany.
In 2005, the family was deported back, and Hiannik was allowed to stay only due to the fact that he had already successfully played for the Schalke youth team.
Kamba was a talented right-back and started with Manuel Neuer and Benedict Höwedes, who later made the national team
However, then the defender's career began to decline, the Congolese began to play for various lower division teams, and in 2013 he got a job at the Evonik chemical plant and at the same time played for the Huls amateur club.
In 2016, unexpectedly, a message came about the death of Kamba.
As the player's wife Christina said, the footballer went home to the Congo and one day decided, without friends, all alone to travel inland.
At the same time, Khiannik did not take documents and money with him, even left his phone at home, and then a message came about a car accident in which he died.
“On January 8, a woman called me who introduced herself as his mother and said in broken German that he had died in a car accident.
This message threw me into a real shock: my husband always said that he had no parents, ”Christina admitted.
When the news of the tragedy reached Germany, the ex-wife presented the Congolese death certificate for Kamba and began to prepare her husband's funeral.
Then the girl received a six-figure amount for the football player's insurance.
As it turned out, the couple had previously issued a policy for € 600 thousand, which doubled in the event of death as a result of an accident.
Also, the woman was paid compensation in the amount of € 100 thousand from the Evonik company and the so-called widow's money from the city in the amount of € 1.5 thousand per month.
The Hüls dedicated a touching obituary to the Congolese, which said: “He represented the ideas and values of our club like no one else.
His passing is a huge loss.
Undoubtedly, the death of Khiannik is a bitter blow for us in sports terms, but first of all we will miss him as a person. "
This is where the story would have ended, but in 2018 Hiannik unexpectedly resurrected.
He appeared at the German Embassy in the city of Kinshasa and told what really happened.
According to Kamba, he was kidnapped, taken to a remote village and left without documents, money and a telephone.
Therefore, the football player for two years could not contact the outside world and dispel the rumor about his tragic death.
After solving bureaucratic issues, Hiannik returned to the Ruhr area and again got a job at an energy company.
At the same time, it is not entirely clear why Evonik decided to take the Congolese into the state again, without demanding the compensation paid back for his death.
A criminal case was opened against Christina, and Kamba first acted in it as a witness.
“After he returned home, his aunt reported that his mother had died.
But before she died, she confessed: she set everything up with me.
But this is complete absurdity.
Much does not fit in his story, every word can be refuted, ”the girl was indignant in an interview with RT.
However, then the prosecution saw a conspiracy in the couple's actions.
Prosecutor Hauke Schlick said that initially the two of them wanted to take out an insurance policy for four million euros, and then split the money, but the “widow” and “victim” didn’t share something between themselves and went their separate ways.
The prosecutor demanded a sentence of four and a half years for both.
As a result, the court made a softer decision.
Christina's lawyer Michael-Konrad Wolf was unhappy with this turn of events.
He assured that his ward was sincerely surprised by the news of her husband's death, and initially she was most worried about only one question, how to transfer Hyannik's body from Congo to Germany.
In addition, if she had been involved in fraud, she would have disappeared with the money long ago, rather than investing it in real estate.
Lawyer Lars Dippel, who represented the interests of Kamba, also expressed disagreement with the sentence.
He drew attention to the fact that the Congolese did not even see the money and could not be connected with them in any way.
As for the defendants themselves, they remained silent during the trial, and after the announcement of the court's decision, Christina admitted that she had lost faith in justice.
However, the defense still has time to appeal.