The Magistrates Court, sitting as a Court of Criminal Judicature and presided over by Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, acquitted a man accused of making a false statement after reporting that he had found his vehicle damaged.
The court found that while the evidence did point towards a crime having been committed, it was not the crime with which he had been charged.
In the Police vs Tonio Aquilina, decided on 13 August 2026, Aquilina was charged under Article 188 of the Criminal Code with knowingly making a false declaration or giving false information in a document intended for a public authority in order to obtain an advantage or benefit.
The prosecution argued that Aquilina had falsely reported that he had found his vehicle damaged, when the evidence indicated that it was himself who had caused the damage.
The magistrate addressed this point unequivocally, declaring: “There can never be any doubt that, in this case, the accused reported an offence which he was well aware had never occurred.”
Despite that finding, however, it was not enough to convict him.
The difficulty lay not in whether the report was false, but in the offence which the prosecution had chosen to charge him with. The court held that the facts of the case did not fall within the parameters of Article 188 of the Criminal Code. Instead, it considered that the evidence pointed towards the offence contemplated under Article 110(2), which deals with the simulation of an offence.
In explaining that distinction, the court referred to the Police vs Anthony Galea, decided on 9 July 2010, in which Magistrate Laurence Quintano examined the difference between material and ideological falsity.
Material falsity concerns the genuineness of the document itself—a fabricated document or an authentic document that is subsequently altered. Ideological falsity, on the other hand, arises where the document itself is genuine but its contents are untrue.
The distinction was encapsulated in the well-known proposition that: “A forgery is a document which not only tells a lie, but tells a lie about itself.”
The point was that reducing a false statement to writing does not, by itself, necessarily transform it into the type of falsity contemplated by the offence with which Aquilina had been charged.
By contrast, the court considered that the conduct emerging from the evidence was more appropriately captured by Article 110(2). On that offence, the court referred specifically to the Court of Criminal Appeal judgement in the Police vs Anthony Farrugia, decided on 2 April 2004.
In the Farrugia case, the court explained that the purpose behind the offence is to prevent the competent authorities from being misled into investigating a crime which never occurred, wasting police resources and potentially causing suspicion to fall upon innocent persons.
That distinction proved decisive in Aquilina’s case.
The result was, on its face, somewhat counter-intuitive. The court was not acquitting Aquilina because it believed no false report had been made. Nor did it find that the evidence failed to show that he had reported an offence which never occurred.
On the contrary, Magistrate Frendo Dimech expressly found that the evidence pointed towards Aquilina having reported an offence which he knew had never taken place. The problem was that he had not been charged under the correct article at law.
Magistrate Frendo Dimech was sharply critical of the manner in which the charge had been formulated.
She stated: “It is truly regrettable that charges are issued without the caution which criminal proceedings require… Justice is not being served when accused persons are not charged with the offences which the evidence actually indicates they are guilty of.”
She described the situation as: “Nothing less than a blow to the valuable work of the Police Force, not to mention the proper administration of justice.”
The charging error ultimately left the court with a straightforward result—Aquilina’s acquittal.
This article may also be accessed on MaltaToday.
