Civil servant on trial for five simultaneous government jobs

A civil servant went on trial at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday accused of fraudulently holding five full-time government jobs at the same time. At his peak, prosecutors said, Kashim Chowdhury, 55, from Whitechapel in east London, was contracted to work 183 hours a week — fifteen more than a seven-day week contains. Between February 2020 and September 2023 he earned almost £350,000 from eight public employers.

Chowdhury began at Tower Hamlets Council in February 2020 and took a second job at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in April 2021; the two roles overlapped for more than a year. For four months in 2022 he also held a post at East London NHS Trust, and after leaving the council he added positions at 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. By May 2023 he was being paid for five full-time jobs at once.

Prosecutor Lucy Organ told jurors that Chowdhury had made false representations about his existing employment when applying for each role. "Clearly, he would not have been employed by his employers if they had known he had multiple other full-time jobs," she said. He told employers he needed to work from home to care for his "unwell" mother, and exploited the work-from-home culture that began during the pandemic to keep the jobs apart, the court heard. He took sick leave from some of them in order to work the others, and was signed off at some with "mixed anxiety and a depressive disorder" — without handing the sick note to all of his employers.

The detail prosecutors dwelt on came from a video call in May 2023. Aleesha Adams, his manager at the UK Health Security Agency, had arranged a Teams meeting to discuss his recent sick leave. Chowdhury appeared on camera coughing and blowing his nose; his face appeared white while his neck was a different colour, and at one point the make-up on his forehead began to separate, showing the skin underneath. He had also logged on with a Defra email address, which he suggested might be an old one — an explanation Organ told jurors was a lie. The make-up, she said, was "almost laughable" and demonstrated "quite how far the defendant was willing to go in his deceit".

Eight public bodies paid him full-time salaries over three and a half years, each unaware of the others. His performance suffered, the court heard, only when the workload became "too much to cope with". Chowdhury denies nine counts of fraud, and the trial continues.

A week contains 168 hours. In May 2023, prosecutors say, Kashim Chowdhury was contracted for 183.