SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Singapore man was jailed for three years after he faked his own death in a civil war shoot-out in Sri Lanka in 1987 to escape his creditors and claim S$331,341 (122,637 pounds) in insurance money, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
The Straits Times said that Gandaruban SubraMAN(MAN.XE)am fledSingapore more than 20 years ago -- harassed by creditors andillegal money lenders since the failure of his car rentalbusiness -- and moved to London to work as a street sweeper.
The 60-year old eventually settled in Sri Lanka where hemanaged to obtain a death certificate stating he had beenkilled in a shootout between government troops and tamil Tigerrebels, allowing his family to claim on his insurance policies.
But he returned to Singapore a number of times using a fakeSri Lankan passport and also remarried his wife in Sri Lanka in1994 and fathered a son, their fourth child, two years later.
The couple has since divorced.
Gandaruban's scam was discovered by a Singapore lawyer andarrested at Singapore's Changi Airport last October.
His former wife and brother both served jail time for theirpart in the fraud, but have since completed their sentences.
(Reporting by Jan Dahinten; Editing by David Fox)
