German music producer Frank Farian, founder of the disco group Boney M, has died aged 82, his family has announced.
On January 23, they released a statement through Farian's agency saying he had died at his home in Miami.
The group Boney M, formed in 1976, had several hits including Daddy Cool, Rasputin, and Rivers of Babylon.
Farian also founded the duo Milli Vanilli, which was embroiled in a cheating scandal.
Farian was born Franz Reuter in 1941 in Kirn, southwest Germany, and trained as a chef while pursuing a musical career - first as a singer and then as a producer.
He has worked with the likes of Meat Loaf and Stevie Wonder and is estimated to have sold around 800 million records worldwide.
In 1990, Farian was involved in a scandal surrounding Milli Vanilli when he admitted that they did not sing on their records.
Later, the Grammy Award for Best New Artist was taken from the duo, who recorded several hits in the late 1980s.
In 2022, Farian revealed that he underwent heart surgery and was fitted with a pig heart valve, which he says saved his life./BGNES
