NOVEMBER 9, 1998

The story of Farouk and Hassan

IF losing the World Championship was not bad enough, Michael Schumacher has come under attack in recent days from other directions with the most bizarre story coming from the Algerian government's daily newspaper El-Moudjahid. This claims that after several weeks of investigation it had established that Michael and Ralf Schumacher are not Germans at all but were in fact born in the city of Blida, 30 miles from Algiers.

According to the newspaper, the Schumacher brothers were born Farouk and Hassan Mahmoud from had an Algerian father and a German mother. The story says that when their father died the boys went back to Germany with their mother and were renamed Michael and Ralf.

While the story is rather far-fetched there is no obvious reason why the Algerian government would want to put out such stories...

At the same time the long-running battle over some of Michael Schumacher's millions continues with journalist BurkhardÊNuppeney claiming $18m of income - half of Willi Weber's 20% of Michael's earnings - for having helped to launch Schumacher's career. The case went to court in June with the judge ruling that Weber must reveal his earnings from Schumacher based on Nuppeney's claims that he and Weber signed a deal to manage Schumacher in 1988 and that the agreement was broken in 1990. A court in Stuttgart is due to hear the case in December.