A 42-year-old Wood­brook busi­ness­woman has sued the State, al­leg­ing that she was ma­li­cious­ly pros­e­cut­ed for de­fraud­ing a hard­ware store of more than $850,000.

Last Tues­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Nicole George filed the law­suit against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and PC Dion Her­nan­dez, who laid 13 fraud charges against her in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

George was ac­cused of pay­ing for goods with 13 dis­hon­oured cheques.

Months be­fore Her­nan­dez laid the charges, the hard­ware store had filed a civ­il law­suit against George to re­cov­er the mon­ey.

While that case was pend­ing, George al­leged that the hard­ware store’s own­er had threat­ened her with a firearm.

She re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice.

George made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances in the crim­i­nal case be­fore a mag­is­trate dis­missed 12 of the charges. The re­main­ing charge was re­port­ed­ly dis­missed months lat­er, af­ter the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) ad­mit­ted that it could not sup­port the ba­sis or man­ner in which it had been brought.

Her­nan­dez re­port­ed­ly chal­lenged the out­come, but the ap­peal was even­tu­al­ly dis­con­tin­ued be­fore it was heard by a pan­el.

In court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, George’s lawyers, led by Ravi Ra­j­coomar, SC, claimed that Her­nan­dez had no rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to charge her.

“Twelve of the 13 charges were statute-barred when laid, as was ap­par­ent on their face, and could not in law re­sult in a con­vic­tion,” they said.

“He (Her­nan­dez) did not him­self form any hon­est be­lief, on rea­son­able grounds, that the claimant was guilty of the of­fences charged,” they added.

They al­so point­ed out that George had paid $400,000 to­wards the debt be­fore the charges were laid.

They claimed that she had of­fered to pro­vide ev­i­dence of the pay­ments, but Her­nan­dez re­fused to con­sid­er it.

They fur­ther claimed that he failed to prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gate the hard­ware store own­er’s al­leged threats, in­clud­ing an al­le­ga­tion that the own­er got his daugh­ter, a po­lice of­fi­cer, to “pub­lish her on so­cial me­dia”.

“Those threats were then car­ried out, by the charges and by the me­dia re­lease,” they said.

George’s lawyers claimed that her rep­u­ta­tion was se­vere­ly dam­aged when the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is­sued a press re­lease re­port­ing that she had been charged.

“The claimant has suf­fered and con­tin­ues to suf­fer de­pres­sion, se­vere anx­i­ety, chron­ic shame and sui­ci­dal ideation, with con­tin­u­ing dai­ly dis­tress and a loss of her sense of self,” they said.

“The dis­tress was great­ly in­creased by the ef­fect of the pub­lic­i­ty on her three daugh­ters, who were bul­lied at school and in need of med­ical and/or psy­cho­log­i­cal care as a re­sult,” they added.

They claimed that George’s se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny lost lu­cra­tive con­tracts as a re­sult of the charges and that busi­ness as­so­ciates re­fused to ac­cept her cheques as pay­ment.

They al­so al­leged that the charges af­fect­ed George’s stand­ing with her bankers, sev­er­al of whom with­drew fi­nanc­ing fa­cil­i­ties from her and her com­pa­ny.

They claimed that the with­draw­al of the fi­nanc­ing left a res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in­com­plete and led to the clo­sure of a night­club.

“The un­fair and il­le­gal pub­li­ca­tion by the TTPS di­rect­ly re­sult­ed in the claimant’s loss of cred­it­wor­thi­ness and the fail­ure of her de­vel­op­ment and busi­ness­es,” they said.

George is al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ryan Ra­j­coomar and Au­ro­ra Bharath.