A civil servant who secretly held multiple public sector jobs on full-time salaries has been found guilty of nine counts of fraud.
Kashim Chowdhury, from east London, had five government jobs that overlapped in the spring of 2023. He fraudulently earned more than £284,000 of taxpayers’ money.
The prosecution accused the 56-year-old of ”deliberate, intentional dishonesty” and of ”exploiting the system”.
After seven hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously found Chowdhury guilty of eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by a failure to disclose.
The judge said Chowdhury faced a ”very significant custodial sentence”. He added he was refusing bail because of the significance of the crime and for Chowdhury’s own wellbeing.
Between 2020 and 2023 Kashim Chowdhury had eight full-time public sector roles that overlapped and earned him £350,000 in total.
The prosecution told the court that on application forms he provided inaccurate information about his employment status and failed to disclose to government departments that he was already a civil servant. Once he secured the roles he didn’t tell his employers he was working elsewhere.
He was allowed to work entirely from home because he told his employers he was caring for his mother, whom he lived with in east London. She had dementia and was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023.
But rather than reduce his workload to look after her, he kept taking on new jobs. In the spring of 2023, when his mother was a few months away from death, he had jobs at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.
During this period he was contracted to work 183 hours a week – more than the number of hours that exist in seven days.
