Marbella Police Officer Acquitted of Stealing Rolex

A MARBELLA police officer has been acquitted of embezzlement of public funds after being accused of stealing a confiscated Rolex.

The Marbella police officer and her partner had originally both been sentenced to a year in prison, a year of disqualification from public office and a €300 fine after it was claimed they had stolen a Rolex confiscated from a store.
The allegations were originally made in 2013 when the 37-year-old officer from Guipuzcoa, named only as A.A.R., was working in the Marbella Judicial Police’s Jewellery Sale Control Group.
During a review of items at the police unit’s seized records room it was found that a Rolex watch, which had been confiscated from a store on Calle Ramon y Cajal in Marbella, was missing.
Since only two officers from the police department had keys to access the store, agent A.A.R. was accused of taking the watch and gifting it to her partner, S.T.A., a 42-year-old Citizen Security guard from Avila.
Despite the fact that the Rolex, originally thought to be worth thousands of Euros, eventually turned out to be a fake worth only around 20, testimony from two further witnesses, a Marbella jeweller and a friend of the couple who mentioned seeing the watch on S.T.A., led prosecutors to launch a case against the couple.
After being sentenced by the Malaga Provincial Court, both A.A.R. and S.T.A. challenged the decision, leading the Andalusia Superior Court to acquit S.T.A. due to lack of evidence.
Officer A.A.R. then took her case to the Supreme Court, where only around 10 per cent of convictions end up being overturned.
During her appeal, Judge Carmen Lamela found there had been a violation of the presumption of innocence of A.A.R. and acquitted the officer.
Speaking at the hearing, the agent’s lawyer, Antonio Suarez-Valdes, said: “The fact that the defendant had a watch of the same characteristics to be repaired does not in itself explain that it was.”

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