Civil Servant Found Guilty of Nine Counts of Fraud for Holding Multiple Jobs

According to the BBC UK, a civil servant who secretly held multiple full-time positions on full-time salaries has been found guilty of nine counts of fraud. Kashim Chowdhury, who resides in east London, held five government jobs that overlapped during the spring of 2023, and he fraudulently earned more than £284,000 of public funds. The prosecution alleged that the 56-year-old engaged in "deliberate, intentional dishonesty" and was "exploiting the system."

Following seven hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously determined Chowdhury guilty of one count of fraud by a failure to disclose and eight counts of fraud by false representation. The judge indicated that Chowdhury would face a "very significant custodial sentence" and stated that he was being denied bail due to the severity of the offense and for his own well-being.

Sarah Melo, a specialist prosecutor at the CPS Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate, stated that this constituted sustained and deliberate dishonesty, noting that Chowdhury knew he could not legitimately hold multiple full-time roles concurrently but continued to conceal his activities. A spokesperson for Defra commented that Chowdhury "abused the trust placed in him as a public servant" and that all available avenues would be used to recover the proceeds of his misconduct.

Between 2020 and 2023, Chowdhury held eight full-time public sector roles that overlapped, accumulating a total of £350,000. The prosecution informed the court that Chowdhury provided inaccurate employment status information on application forms and failed to disclose to government departments that he was already a civil servant; furthermore, after securing these roles, he did not inform his employers that he was working elsewhere.

Chowdhury was permitted to work entirely from home because he claimed he was caring for his mother in east London, who had dementia and was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023. Despite this, he continued to take on new roles rather than reducing his workload to care for her. In the spring of 2023, while his mother was nearing death, he held positions 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 per week, exceeding the total hours in seven days.

Chowdhury stated that he took on numerous roles because he feared losing his livelihood after experiencing insecure employment, citing a redundancy from a job at the Department for Education in 2013 and a subsequent diagnosis of PTSD. He claimed that his judgment was impaired when applying for jobs due to "my stress, distress and trauma and due to my panic at the time."

However, prosecution barrister Lucy Organ informed the jury that Chowdhury had lied in his evidence and under oath, which she stated demonstrated the extent of his deceit. Several of his managers testified about his poor performance. Evidence from Dan McCartney, who managed Chowdhury at Defra, was particularly damaging. McCartney reported that he had to "effectively tell him what to do the whole time," and that during video calls, Chowdhury would switch off his camera, attributing this to technical issues, a situation that reportedly continued for four to five months. McCartney added that because Chowdhury was not subject to formal performance measures at Defra, he was granted a permanent position and remained there for two years.

The prosecution contended that Chowdhury utilized sick notes to manage his impossible schedule. In March 2023, he was on sick leave from four of the organizations he worked for, yet he continued working at the Home Office without disclosing his illness.

Aleesha Adams, his line manager at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), conducted a video call with him in May 2023 after he had been off sick for three months, intending to create a plan for his return to work. She told the jury that at the start of the call, he was coughing frequently and waving tissues toward the camera, and she also stated that he had been using white make-up to appear ill. Adams informed the court that as the meeting progressed, the make-up began to come off his forehead, noting that "He was sweating, it was like rubbing off so it was darker underneath and darker on the neck."

Chowdhury countered to the jury that this was a smear and that he had not been wearing make-up. Following the call, Adams discovered that he had logged into the call using a Defra email address. When she questioned him about this, he attributed it to a technical error. Adams became suspicious and told the jury that she believed he was lying, subsequently escalating her concerns within the UKHSA hierarchy.

Chowdhury's fraudulent activities continued for several more months until he departed the civil service in September 2023. He was ultimately identified in 2024 by the government's National Fraud Initiative, which conducts biennial searches of civil service databases, including payroll, to identify irregularities.

Separately, Chowdhury faces accusations from his siblings regarding his influence over their mother concerning the family home. In a High Court case, his two brothers and sister claim that he exerted "undue influence" on Faijun Nessa to sign documents that would allow him to inherit half of her residence. The four-story, six-bedroom home in east London has an estimated value of £2.1m. His siblings assert that their mother could not have understood what she was signing because she was "desperately unwell," noting that she received a terminal diagnosis of stage four metastatic colorectal cancer in January 2023. The claimants further allege that Mrs. Nessa, who was nearly blind and unable to speak English, was unaware of the documents' contents because they were not translated into her native Bengali when signed. Kashim Chowdhury denies these claims, and that legal matter remains ongoing.