Jealous French girls falsely accused former lover of stealing laptops, says court

Maxime Tarraso, a 22-year-old student from France, was arrested at the airport and charged with stealing two laptops belonging to his female flatmates on Monday

A court has ruled that a French holidaymaker, accused by his flatmates of stealing their laptops and trying to flee the country, had been set up by the victims.

Maxime Tarraso, a 22-year-old student from France, was arrested at the airport and charged with stealing two laptops belonging to his female flatmates on Monday.

During Tarraso’s arraignment before Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit, the court had heard the man’s two flatmates, Caroline Le Roux and Fatoumata Tidiana Kiota, testify that they had found their laptops to be missing upon returning to their shared flat, after spending a day at the beach.

But the court then heard Le Roux and Kiota make the improbable claim that they had deduced that Tarraso was flying home a day earlier than planned, from the simple fact that his belongings were no longer there and so the girls caught a taxi to the airport and reported the theft to the police there.

From the girls’ testimony the court heard that the friends had fallen out some days before, after the man had wrongly accused the two girls of taking a packet of cigarettes of his.

During Tarraso’s arraignment, his lawyer Leontine Calleja probed the witnesses at length, successfully raising several doubts about this version of events, however. The defence pointed out that the timings given by the girls for their version of events to have taken place was highly unlikely. 

In her cross examination of Le Roux, the lawyer asked whether the witness had been romantically involved with the accused in the past. It emerged that she had, and that Tarraso had ended the relationship.

Le Roux denied bearing any ill-will as a result of this, saying she had “come to Malta in a group to have fun.”

But Tarraso had consistently maintained that the girls had lent him the laptops, which he was to hand back to them upon their return to France. The accusations were lies made to pay him back for breaking up with Le Roux, he claimed.

The court was not convinced by the girls' account, noting that the accused had been a friend of theirs for a long time and had no motive to steal their laptops. It found Tarraso not guilty, noting that the accused’s version of events had been consistent from the time of his arrest, while the girls’ version “did not make sense.” 

Contacted by the MaltaToday following his acquittal, Tarraso's lawyer did not rule out the possibility that her client would be filing proceedings of his own against the girls.