Former Miss Trinidad and Tobago gets one week from court to repay $100,000

Miss Trinidad and Tobago Yvee Clarke have to pay over $100,000 within seven days to. A GoFundMe account was set up to help raise $US30,000 to save her boutique, and she has deactivated due to technical problems.

This after last week Friday a video, which was viral on different social media platforms, revealed Clarke crying as court judges seized items from her business pace.

On Wednesday, Clarke, who stated she has contemplated ending her life after the video went viral, gave her side of the story, via a “live” that was posted on her Facebook page, in which she said she has been surviving months of financial setbacks.

Clarke said when she started her boutique three years ago, she fulfilled a dream as a young entrepreneur. However, a series of business mistakes forced her to borrow $63,000 from her friend, which with care and other fees has reached to $110,335.

I launched a GoFundMe campaign, but I deactivated it because I was having mechanical difficulties with that. From that campaign, $US325 was raised. Those funds would have been paid to the senders.

“I started as a naive entrepreneur. The Style Affair was started and opened in ­December 2018. The actual boutique was first at another location. I fixed up a space that didn’t work out and I lost everything and had to move out and find another place from scratch with funding from savings towards the dream and two small enterprise loans from two financial institutions,” Clarke said.

“I had a friend at the time that I told in. At the time what I needed was $63,000, not $100,000, not $150,000, as I see online. The initial loan was $63,000 that I got from this friend, who was very supportive at this time.

“He agreed to lend me the money at a-20 per cent interest rate, which I agreed to because I wanted to open at the time as I was already operating at a loss, with no income coming in. This is someone that I loved dearly, someone that I recognised a lot, and I think that is part of why I am so heartbroken by what is occurring now,” Clarke said.