News

Woman in court over stealing husband’s whiskey collection

03 June 2024 By Louis Thomas

A woman has appeared in court after the €9,000 whiskey collection housed in the hotel she co-owned with her estranged husband went missing.

According to Times of Malta, the hotel, in Vittoriosa/Birgu on the south side of Malta, was jointly-owned by the couple, though the husband (unnamed) claims to have been the one responsible for amassing the collection of spirits.

The precise contents of the collection have not been disclosed, but the husband estimated its value at around €9,000.

The husband accused his estranged wife of the theft of the collection of 30 rare bottles back in July 2020, and showed CCTV of the removal of the bottles. However, she and her new partner, who also worked at the hotel, claimed to the police that they were just moving them to protect them while work was underway.

The police did not intervene until the husband showed receipts which proved that he had started the collection before their marriage, and therefore he and his wife were not co-owners of it.

Appearing in court, the wife was found guilty of disturbing her husband’s possession of the goods, but she was cleared of any charges of theft, whereas her partner has been given an eight month prison sentence, suspended for two years. Both appealed, and her appeal was quashed on the basis that co-owning the hotel did not give her the co-ownership of the collection, whereas her partner was acquitted as he was acting under the instructions of his boss, the wife/his partner, and not for the sake of profiting from the theft.

Thanks to the presence of CCTV footage and the cooperation of various parties, this booze theft was a relatively simple case to crack, others are not so easy – the disappearance of £1.3 million worth of fine wine from the cellar of La Tour d’Argent in Paris has left detectives scratching their heads.