Alfred Mifsud texted partner SMS intended for lover, Zelbst tells court

The former partner of the Central Bank’s deputy governor Alfred Mifsud has told a judge her long-term partner was seeing someone else during their relationship, having sent her messages intended for his lover.

Anna Zelbst took the witness stand before judge Silvio Meli today to testify in a court case Mifsud filed for her eviction from an apartment at Fort Cambridge, Tigné.

Zelbst and Mifsud were not married, but a contract for maintenance had been entered into. Zelbst recently claimed her estranged partner had accepted bribes for the purchase of ATMs for Mid-Med Bank, of which he was a chairman between 1996 and 1998.

In court, Zelbst claimed Mifsud had stopped her from working, claiming she was an unfit mother. “I stopped working, up until 2003 when I became a marketing manager for a TV station.”

The couple’s relationship ended in 2006, but was briefly rekindled in 2009 when Mifsud asked for reconciliation. “I didn’t really want to but I didn’t tell him this. In the interest of the children I bowed by head.”

The Fort Cambridge apartment, over which this case was filed, had not been finished at the time. Instead, Mifsud visited her Naxxar home while their children lived with their mother. When she moved to the Fort Cambridge 15th-floor apartment, Zelbst said she was “very unhappy”, apparently being terrified of heights. “I kept my mouth shut because of the children and continued to live there.”

Mifsud rented out another flat on the same floor, and lived with his family up until February 2016.

Zelbst recalled how she had found out that Mifsud had been seeing someone else.

“We went out to eat alone and he was on his mobile. He told me that he was sending an email to the chairman of my workplace. I unlocked my mobile to send a message to my daughter who lives abroad. As I unlocked it I found a message from Alfred. I thought he was joking, as he did this sometimes, but when I read it I found a message to his lover.

“I asked him what he was doing and he said he was sending an email, so I told him that he had just messaged me. He seized my hand and begged me to forgive him, but I decided that after 24 years of mental abuse it was enough.”

Zelbst said her daughter was aware of the affair because she had received a similar message by mistake on New Year’s Day.

Mifsud left the apartment in February 2016. “I came back from a drive to clear my head and found him in bed in his pyjamas. I asked him, ‘Do you have a girlfriend? Then go up and go with her’.”

Zelbst said Mifsud committed to maintain their children until they leave home. “I asked him for it in writing as he is a pathological liar, and he had told me that the letter would be in the letterbox that evening.”

At this point, Zelbst claimed Mifsud returned to the Tigné apartment where her son found him rummaging in her files. Mifsud’s lawyer Paul Lia objected, arguing that this assertion was hearsay and that this had not been testified to elsewhere.

The court allowed her to continue. “I had many documents in this drawer, amongst them three very important ones. My son told me that he had seen it on the table.”

She also said that once upon returning from abroad, she had found that her car had been taken away from the airport car park. It was then that she had found that it had not been registered in her name in the first place. She filed a police report but that action was still pending.

The case continues in March.