Koch died on Friday in a hospital at Tsumeb after slipping into a diabetes-related coma, his wife, Rachel Nathaniel-Koch, was quoted as telling the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) yesterday.

Koch had been taken to hospital because of diabetes problems the previous day, and he fell into a coma on Friday, DPA reported.

He had previously also been diagnosed with cancer, but this illness was being treated and was considered to be under control.

Koch would have turned 60 years of age later this month.

Born in Germany, he bought the farm La Rochelle northeast of Tsumeb in 1994 and obtained permanent residence in Namibia in October 1997.

By December 1999, he moved to Namibia.

At that stage, the German authorities had started an investigation into the activities of a financial consultancy run by Koch.

The investigation later led to Koch being indicted in Germany on a multitude of charges related to a money-lending scheme in which Koch had arranged lending and borrowing transactions by numerous German local authorities.

It was alleged that in the course of these financing arrangements between 1987 and 1999, Koch had committed fraud involving the equivalent of some $420 million and evaded taxes to the tune of about N$24 million.

It was also alleged that Koch had siphoned off the equivalent of about N$110 million for his own benefit from the lending and borrowing scheme he was arranging.

The German government finally formally requested its Namibian counterpart on October 2 2002 to extradite Koch to Germany so that he could be tried on 203 counts of fraud, 12 counts of tax evasion and four charges of the forgery.

By then, Koch had developed La Rochelle into a luxurious hunting farm and tourist lodge.

The 10 000-hectare farm was valued at more than N$14,5 million at that time.

As a result of the extradition request, Koch was arrested at La Rochelle on October 14 2002.

He spent the next four years and almost two months in prison, fighting the extradition all the way until he won a final appeal against the extradition in the Supreme Court on November 29 2006, when that court ruled that Namibia's strict Extradition Act had not been followed to the letter with the German extradition request.

The case presented the largest challenge to date to the Extradition Act.

Koch was released from Grootfontein Prison after winning his case in the Supreme Court, and returned to his farm after that.

A month later, he married his wife, who is a Namibian lawyer, in a civil ceremony at the farm.

After leaving jail, Koch only wanted to live in peace and quiet, DPA quoted Nathaniel-Koch as saying.

Local News Headlines Of The Last 48 Hours

•  Hishongwa hits out at 'newcomers'
•  Doctors to court over dispensing rights
•  Project money missing
•  N$20 000 fine for computer corruption
•  Police kill suspect after 'struggle'
•  Union wants NHE bosses' heads
•  2008 a year of political violence: DTA
•  Gender violence takes centre stage
•  Employers of disabled people awarded
•  Closure of copper mines adds gloom to Nam mining outlook
•  78 Zim farmers win land case
•  Floodgates open over Windhoek
•  Everyone except Swapo to blame for the violence, claims President