UK Civil Servant Convicted for Secretly Working Five Govt Jobs at Once, Collecting £284,000 in Salaries

A 56-year-old British civil servant, Kashim Chowdhury, has been convicted of nine counts of fraud after secretly working multiple full-time government jobs simultaneously and fraudulently collecting more than £284,000 in taxpayers’ money.

Chowdhury, who lives in east London, was found guilty after a jury unanimously convicted him of eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by failure to disclose, following seven hours of deliberations.

The court heard that he deliberately concealed his multiple employment arrangements from government departments while collecting salaries from several public sector employers.

Prosecutors described his actions as “deliberate, intentional dishonesty”, accusing him of exploiting weaknesses in the system to secure multiple government salaries.

The judge reportedly warned that Chowdhury was facing a “very significant custodial sentence” and refused him bail, citing the seriousness of the offences and concerns about his wellbeing.

Sarah Melo, a specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Serious Economic, Organised Crime and International Directorate, described the scheme as a sustained act of dishonesty.

“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,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said Chowdhury had “abused the trust placed in him as a public servant”, adding that the department would pursue all available avenues to recover the proceeds of his criminal activities.

Evidence presented during the trial revealed that between 2020 and 2023, Chowdhury held eight overlapping full-time public sector positions, earning approximately £350,000 in total.

Prosecutors told the court that he repeatedly supplied false or inaccurate employment information on job application forms and failed to disclose his existing civil service employment to prospective government employers.

Even after securing the positions, he allegedly continued concealing his other jobs from the departments employing him.

In a further revelation, the court heard that Chowdhury had been allowed to work entirely from home after informing his employers that he was caring for his mother, who lived with him in east London.

His mother was suffering from dementia and was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023. However, prosecutors said he continued taking on additional government positions rather than reducing his workload.

At the height of the scheme in spring 2023, Chowdhury was simultaneously employed across six government departments and agencies: 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.

In an extraordinary illustration of the scale of his multiple employment arrangements, his combined contractual working hours reportedly reached 183 hours per week — more than the 168 hours available in seven days.

The conviction has raised fresh questions about employment verification, accountability and oversight within Britain’s public sector, particularly how one individual was able to maintain multiple full-time government positions without detection.