Woman who borrowed from friend and made excuses to evade repayment ordered to return $466,700
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 17 Aug 2024
Author: Selina Lum
The judge said one friend’s seemingly endless generosity and misplaced trust was callously exploited by the other.
A woman who borrowed large sums of money from a friend over three years and gave seemingly absurd excuses for not repaying the loans has been ordered by the High Court to return $466,700 to the lender.
The lender, Ms Natasha Mak-Levrion, had sued the borrower, Ms R. Shiamala, for the return of $525,200, but she was able to provide evidence to back up transactions amounting to only $487,700.
After taking into account that $21,000 had been repaid over the years, the court found that Ms Mak-Levrion is owed $466,700.
In a written judgment issued on Aug 15, Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal quoted a famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which a character in the tragic play advised his son that “neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”.
The judge said both the distressing realities alluded to in the line – the inevitable loss by the lender of both the loan and the friend, and the mountain of debt inevitably collapsing upon itself – have unfortunately reared their ugly heads in the current case.
He said: “One friend’s seemingly endless generosity and misplaced (and misguided) trust was callously exploited by the other, and when it came time to pay up, all that the other party could do was doggedly evade, ignore and resist while concomitantly coming up with excuses to borrow more and more, on the patently unsustainable and impossibly optimistic hope that the time to repay would simply never arrive.
“That time has now come.”
The two women met each other in 2016, after Ms Mak-Levrion’s company was hired by Ms Shiamala’s company.
Ms Mak-Levrion is a director and shareholder of a Singapore-registered company that provides consultancy and other services.
Ms Shiamala used to be a director and sole shareholder of a Singapore-registered company.
Ms Mak-Levrion said that in mid-February 2016, as she was leaving the office, she saw Ms Shiamala sitting alone, seemingly sad and distressed.
She said Ms Shiamala then poured out her woes and made various allegations against her husband.
After this incident, the two women kept in touch, largely to discuss Ms Shiamala’s personal life.
On March 14, 2016, Ms Shiamala called Ms Mak-Levrion in a panic and said she needed a loan to tide over her company’s cash flow problems.
On the same day, Ms Mak-Levrion issued a cash cheque for $15,000 – the first of many interest-free loans she made to Ms Shiamala.
In her lawsuit, Ms Mak-Levrion listed 43 loans ranging from $1,000 to $35,000, made between 2016 and 2019.
Each sum was supported by documents tendered to the court, including 800 pages of WhatsApp messages exchanged between her and Ms Shiamala, cheque stubs, bank statements and IOUs.
According to Ms Mak-Levrion, the snowballing loans caused a strain on her own finances, as well as her marriage.
She said Ms Shiamala gave many reasons for her inability to repay them, including apparent calamities such as the deaths of her four brothers and a nephew, and the permanent paralysis of a niece.
On June 24, 2021, she asked Ms Shiamala to sign an acknowledgment, in the presence of two witnesses, that she was indebted to Ms Mak-Levrion for the sum of $525,200.
Ms Mak-Levrion then hired lawyers from Arul Chew & Partners to pursue the debt. No payment was made, and she filed the lawsuit on April 21, 2023.
In her initial defence filed on May 12 that year, Ms Shiamala conceded that she took loans from Ms Mak-Levrion. She later took issue with the fact that the sum appeared higher than what she believed she had borrowed.
Ms Mak-Levrion responded with a court filing on Dec 19, which provided more details.
Ms Shiamala then shifted her stance.
In an affidavit on March 19, 2024, she claimed that the monies passed to her were not loans but an investment by Ms Mak-Levrion in her business.
In his judgment, the judge said Ms Shiamala’s “drastic change” was primarily motivated by her realisation that she had to conjure up a false narrative to avoid responsibility for her debts.
On the stand, Ms Shiamala testified that she was given a mix of personal loans and company investments-cum-loans. She did not present messages or documents to support her contention.
The judicial commissioner said Ms Mak-Levrion’s version of events was consistent with the documentary evidence.
He noted that Ms Shiamala had, in many of the WhatsApp messages, made constant and explicit allusions to needing to borrow money.
At the same time, not a single message spoke of a commercial arrangement, said the judge.
He added that Ms Shiamala’s “impressive line of successive excuses” was simply evidence of the wider web of lies she spun to avoid repaying her debts.
Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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