HEAD of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU), Senior Superintendent Fazil Karimbaksh, has filed a $70 million libel case against the former Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) and retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, Paul Slowe.

Karimbaksh, through his attorney C.V Satram, moved to the Demerara High Court and filed a Statement of Claim against Slowe for damages in excess of $60 million for a series of libel committed between November 2, 2021, and January 12, 2022.

He is also seeking aggravated and or exemplary damages in excess of $10 million,

In his lawsuit, Karimbaksh said that, on October 15, 2021, Slowe appeared at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court to answer three counts of sexual assault and the offence of conspiracy to defraud the State of just over $10 million.

Shortly thereafter Slowe created and began operating Facebook and Youtube pages under the name ‘SPEAKING OUT EXPOSING CORRUPTION’.

The claimant is contending that Slowe, since creating the social media pages, would regularly publish and or cause to be published defamatory material about him.

“The said Facebook and Youtube pages were created by the defendant or at his instruction for the sole purpose of launching character attacks on the aforesaid officers that are investigating him for these offences, in an effort to prejudice the investigations,” Karimbaksh said in his court documents.

In his lawsuit, Karimbaksh said that the slanderous words used against him by Slowe were calculated to disparage him and intentionally done to embarrass, humiliate and injure his reputation and standing as the head of SOCU.

According to the SOCU head, the publications are not only false but are aimed at tarnishing his reputation and have caused him to suffer considerable hurt, distress and embarrassment.

He is arguing that the statements were also published with the intention to lower his character, morality and honesty in the eyes of right-thinking members of the public as they are in electronic circulation on social media.

Among other things, Karimbaksh is claiming that he has been and continues to be demeaned in the eyes of his peers and subordinate ranks of the Guyana Police Force and his authority is also being questioned.

Karimbaksh had successfully obtained an injunction from a High Court judge to restrain Slowe, whether by himself, his servants, his agents or employees from further speaking or publishing the same or any similar defamatory statements about him.  However, that order expired on February 25, 2022.