MIAMI   -   German music producer Frank Farian, founder of the disco band Boney M - has died at the age of 82, according to his fam­ily. They released a state­ment on Tuesday via Far­ian’s agency saying he had passed away at his home in Miami. Boney M, which formed in 1976, had a string of hit singles in­cluding Daddy Cool, Ras­putin and Rivers of Baby­lon. Farian also went on to found the duo Milli Vanilli, who were involved in a lip-synching controversy. He was born Franz Reuther in 1941 in Kirn, south-west­ern Germany, and trained as a chef while also pursu­ing a musical career - first as a singer and then as a producer. He also worked with the likes of Meat Loaf and Stevie Wonder and is reported to have sold an estimated 800 million re­cords worldwide. In 1990, Farian was embroiled in a scandal surrounding Milli Vanilli when he confessed they had not sung on their records. The duo - who scored a clutch of hits in the late 1980s - later had their Grammy Award for best new artist revoked. In 2022, Farian revealed he had undergone heart sur­gery and had a pig heart valve inserted, which he said saved his life.