The for­mer store man­ag­er of a cloth­ing store in Trinci­ty Mall has been or­dered to abide by an agree­ment be­tween her and her for­mer em­ploy­er to re­pay $100,000 for stock she stole dur­ing her tenure.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment at the end of the vir­tu­al tri­al yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad up­held Suite 16 Lim­it­ed’s law­suit against its for­mer em­ploy­ee Prameila Hard­een and or­dered her to clear the debt.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in Au­gust 2005, Hard­een was hired as a sales clerk at the com­pa­ny’s branch at Trinci­ty Mall.

In less than two years, Hard­een was pro­mot­ed to store man­ag­er.

In Sep­tem­ber 2017, the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tor Kath­ri­na Had­dad re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that Hard­een had been steal­ing from the store by is­su­ing cash re­ceipts for in­ven­to­ry and not sub­mit­ting the in­for­ma­tion in­to the com­pa­ny’s com­put­er data­base.

Had­dad re­port­ed the lar­ce­ny to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion and two po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the store to ques­tion Hard­een.

Hard­een al­leged­ly ad­mit­ted that she had been steal­ing for sev­er­al years and agreed to sign a promis­so­ry note, un­der which she would re­pay $100,000 in a year to avoid be­ing pros­e­cut­ed.

The com­pa­ny sued Hard­een af­ter she re­peat­ed­ly failed to clear the debt.

In re­sponse to the law­suit, Hard­een counter-sued the com­pa­ny, as she claimed that she was co­erced by the po­lice of­fi­cers, who were Had­dad’s friends, in­to sign­ing the doc­u­ment. She al­so de­nied that she had sold the com­pa­ny’s in­ven­to­ry and kept the pro­ceeds.

In his judge­ment, Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed Hard­een’s claims, which he de­scribed as in­con­sis­tent and im­plau­si­ble.

He ques­tioned how Had­dad would have used cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers when there was ev­i­dence that she made an of­fi­cial re­port to po­lice.

He al­so not­ed that if Hard­een was as in­no­cent as claimed, she would have re­fused to sign the doc­u­ment and would have made a po­lice re­port of the in­ci­dent af­ter­wards.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so said that Hard­een was very for­tu­nate to be giv­en the op­tion to avoid fac­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“Busi­ness­es should be en­cour­aged to make re­ports to the po­lice and take it to the fullest ex­tent of the law,” Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the com­pa­ny should seek to bring en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings if Hard­een again fails to pay.

“A mes­sage should be sent that this dis­hon­est con­duct is un­ac­cept­able,” Seep­er­sad said.