Civil Servant Accused of Holding Five Government Jobs Simultaneously

A civil servant is accused of defrauding the government by holding multiple full-time positions simultaneously, earning nearly £350,000 over three years. Kashim Chowdhury, 55, allegedly lied about his employment status to secure and maintain concurrent roles with various government departments.

Prosecutor Lucy Organ told Southwark Crown Court that Chowdhury obtained and held a series of full-time employments in the civil service and associated public bodies between 2020 and 2023. At one point, he was employed by five separate government departments concurrently, all paying a full-time salary.

"He achieved this – having concurrent full-time jobs - by making false representations, false declarations, concerning his existing employment status and employment history," Organ stated. "He had to because if he told a respective employer he had a full-time job, they wouldn't have given him another one, would they?"

The prosecution contends that Chowdhury made ongoing implied false representations by not revealing his other full-time employments, and at times, actively lied about his employment history. This concealment resulted in him being paid for multiple full-time jobs at the same time, which the prosecution alleges constitutes fraud.

Chowdhury earned approximately £350,000 from eight employers over the three-year period. The court heard he was paid more than £280,000 in gross pay from employers for months in which he held more than one full-time job. His alleged fraud began in June 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began, while he was already working full-time for a local council and applying for other government positions.

Chowdhury, who resides in Whitechapel, east London, denies nine counts of fraud. The court was informed that his other alleged employers included the Home Office, Defra (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs), the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency, the East London NHS Trust, and Tower Hamlets council.

Chowdhury appeared in court wearing a blue open-neck shirt and a dark jacket. The trial is expected to last approximately three weeks.