Woman cleared of Rolex theft after court questions complainant’s ‘incoherent’ account

A magistrate has cleared Evelyn Micallef of stealing a Rolex from her former partner after the court found that the complainant’s testimony was “not coherent”, riddled with contradictions, and fundamentally incompatible with how a genuine theft victim would behave.

Micallef had been charged with theft, aggravated by value, person, place and violence, as well as with threatening or assaulting her ex-partner, Mario Ellul. The alleged theft took place on 9 May 2019 at Ellul’s residence in Żejtun.

But the court said the prosecution’s case collapsed under the weight of Ellul’s “illogical” version of events, coupled with documentary evidence suggesting that the Rolex had in fact been purchased by Micallef herself.

Ellul reported the alleged theft nearly a month after it supposedly happened. He testified that Micallef, with whom he had been in a relationship for around a year, had entered his home while he was sleeping, grabbed the watch from a bedside table, and fled in a car driven by her daughter.

He insisted that he had previously given her €10,000 in cash to buy the Rolex for him but could not recall key details: neither the price of the watch, nor how much change he received, nor the price of an earlier watch she had bought and returned.

The court remarked that it “made absolutely no sense” for someone to hand over €10,000 in cash yet show no knowledge of what was purchased or how much was spent. Ellul was also unable to explain why he reported the alleged theft only a month later, despite filing a separate police report about an argument with Micallef on the very same day of the incident.

In its judgment, the court remarked that Ellul’s conduct was “certainly not that of a person who had a €7,000 watch stolen and then did nothing for a month and three days.”

Micallef, meanwhile, provided a consistent explanation rooted in what the court described as a “pretended right”, a belief that she had a legitimate claim over the watch.

She told police that she had purchased the Rolex herself on 30 November 2018 for €7,000 after Ellul promised to reimburse her. She kept the receipt in her own name, although the guarantee was placed in his name. When the relationship deteriorated, she took the watch back, insisting that Ellul had never paid her for it.

During interrogation, she stated that Ellul had handed her the watch before an argument broke out, after which she fled the house. She admitted the watch had since been sold.

The court examined whether Micallef’s act constituted theft or the lesser offence of raggion fattasi, the arbitrary exercise of a pretended right, under Article 85 of the Criminal Code.

Quoting previous cases, Magistrate Frendo Dimech noted that ragion fattasi applies when someone takes property not with intent to steal, but under a genuine belief that they are entitled to it. In such cases, the intent to unlawfully profit is absent.

The court emphasised that the law aims to prevent individuals from taking the law into their own hands, but also recognises situations where a person acts based on an honest belief of entitlement.

Given the inconsistencies in Ellul’s testimony, the unexplained reporting delay, and Micallef’s possession of the receipt for the Rolex, the court held that the defence’s theory, that she was reclaiming an item she had bought and for which she was never repaid, was substantially credible.

This created what the magistrate described as a “lingering doubt” that was fatal to the prosecution’s case.

The court therefore found that neither the theft charge nor the alleged assault was proven to the degree required by law.