Civil Servant Guilty of Fraud After Holding Overlapping Government Jobs
A jury at Southwark Crown Court found civil servant Kashim Chowdhury, 56, guilty of nine fraud counts after he held overlapping government jobs and fraudulently earned more than £284,000. The judge warned of a very significant custodial sentence and refused bail.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court in London found civil servant Kashim Chowdhury, 56, from east London, guilty on Monday of nine counts of fraud after he secretly held overlapping government jobs on full-time salaries. Prosecutors said he fraudulently earned more than £284,000 of taxpayers' money.
The jury deliberated for seven hours. It unanimously convicted him of eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by a failure to disclose.
The judge told Chowdhury he faced a "very significant custodial sentence" and refused bail, citing the seriousness of the crime and Chowdhury's own wellbeing.
Eight jobs, 183 hours a week
Between 2020 and 2023, Chowdhury held eight overlapping full-time public sector roles and was paid £350,000 in total. In spring 2023 he had jobs at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), 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.
That month he was contracted to work 183 hours a week. A week has only 168.
The prosecution told the court he gave inaccurate information about his employment status on application forms. He did not tell government departments he was already a civil servant, and he did not tell employers he worked elsewhere once hired.
He worked entirely from home because he said he was caring for his mother, who had dementia and was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023. Rather than reduce his workload, the prosecution said, he kept taking on new jobs.
Prosecution and defense
"This was sustained and deliberate dishonesty," said Sarah Melo, a specialist prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service's Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate. "He knew he could not legitimately hold multiple full-time positions at the same time, but continued to conceal what he was doing."
Chowdhury told the court he took on so many roles because he feared losing his livelihood after insecure work in the past. He said he was made redundant from a Department for Education job in 2013 and was diagnosed with PTSD. He said he had not been thinking clearly "because of my stress, distress and trauma and due to my panic at the time".
Prosecution barrister Lucy Organ rejected that account. "He's lied to you in evidence, he's lied to you under oath," she told the jury.
A Defra spokesperson said Chowdhury "abused the trust placed in him as a public servant". The department said it would use all available avenues to recover the proceeds of his offending.
Managers' evidence
Several managers described poor performance. Dan McCartney, who managed him at Defra, said he had to "effectively tell him what to do the whole time". Chowdhury kept his camera off on video calls, blaming technical problems, for four to five months.
Because he was not under formal performance measures, McCartney said, Chowdhury was given a permanent post and stayed two years.
Aleesha Adams, his line manager at UKHSA, said she doubted his illness on a May 2023 video call. She said white powder appeared to be coming off his forehead and claimed he was wearing white make-up. He denied that in court. "I believed he was lying," she told the jury.
Chowdhury left the Civil Service in September 2023. The government's National Fraud Initiative, which searches databases such as payroll every two years for anomalies, caught him in 2024.
Hannah Keenan of the Institute for Government said the system had clearly failed. "Government departments are taking hiring decisions independently of each other and without systems that join up," she said. The Civil Service employs more than 550,000 people.
