LONDON, Nov. 9, Relish Wire – Kashim Chowdhury, 56, a former UK civil servant who secretly held as many as five full-time government jobs at once, was convicted of fraud on Monday over overlapping salaries worth more than £284,000.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court found Chowdhury guilty on nine counts after a two-week trial of fraud by false representation and one of fraud by failing to disclose information.
Chowdhury, 56, of Whitechapel, east London, built up the overlapping jobs between 2020 and 2023.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) says the 56-year-old had held posts at Tower Hamlets Council in February 2020 and joined the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in April 2021, holding both full-time roles for more than a year. He added a third job at the East London NHS Trust for four months in 2022.
By 2022, he also held positions at Defra, the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.
In total he worked for eight employers over the period.
According to evidence, the convicted fraudster applied for each new job as if he held no other full-time job. When he signed application forms confirming his details were correct, knowing a false statement could lead to prosecution. He then kept the other jobs secret and continued to collect a full-time salary from each one.
Sarah Melo, a specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service, said after the verdict:
“This was sustained and deliberate dishonesty. He knew he could not legitimately hold multiple full-time positions at the same time, but continued to conceal what he was doing.”
“His actions were motivated by financial gain, allowing him to receive multiple salaries through his fraudulent conduct, which we will now seek to reclaim through the Proceeds of Crime Act,” Melo added.
Chowdhury, initially, worked remotely where he told employers he needed to be at home to look after his elderly mother. That arrangement allowed him to work from home, but the fraud lay in the concealment and the false declarations, not in caring for his mother.
According to prosecutors, his workload peaked between March 20 and May 31, 2023, at the time, he held five full-time jobs at once. Together they contracted him to work 183 hours a week, about 15 hours more than the 168 hours in a week.
The deception came to light after a National Fraud Initiative data check showed he was employed by two government departments at the same time.
In May 2023, his UKHSA line manager and a human resources caseworker met him by video to discuss his long-term sickness absence from that job.
During the video meeting, the manager noticed what appeared to be white make-up on his face but not his neck, and that it began to separate on his forehead as the call went on. Also, the manager saw that he had joined from a Defra email address.
Challenged on it by the manager, Chowdhury said he had used a personal laptop and blamed a technical problem.
The 56-year-old fraudster was arrested at home in July 2023 and made no comment when questioned under caution. Defra’s Counter Fraud and Investigations team led the inquiry.
Chowdhury’s defence all this while had been that he had made mistakes while overwhelmed by stress and caring duties, and that some managers knew of his other work, but the jury rejected it, and handed him the sentence.
While Chowdhury has not been sentenced, the judge has refused bail and told him he should expect a “very significant custodial sentence.” The date of sentencing at Southwark Crown Court is yet to be fixed.
“Kashim Chowdhury abused the trust placed in him as a public servant and defrauded taxpayers out of almost £285,000. He will now rightly face the consequences for his actions,” Defra spokesperson said in a statement.
Defra added that the government had tightened employment checks so public-sector fraud can be spotted sooner.
