Civil servant fraudulently held down FIVE government jobs at the same time, court told

A civil servant secretly held multiple taxpayer-funded government jobs simultaneously as part of a fraud worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, a court heard.Kashim Chowdhury allegedly lied about his employment in order to rack up additional roles with various departments including the Home Office, Defra,...

Ghanamma

October 13, 2026Ghana

By RYAN HOOPER, CRIME CORRESPONDENT 15:19 13 Oct 2026, updated 16:03 13 Oct 2026

A civil servant secretly held multiple taxpayer-funded government jobs simultaneously as part of a fraud worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, a court heard.

Kashim Chowdhury allegedly lied about his employment in order to rack up additional roles with various departments including the Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Department of Health and Social Care.

At one point he was employed by five separate Government departments, all paying him a full-time salary – and each worth tens of thousands of pounds.

Chowdhury earned nearly £350,000 from eight employers over a period of three years, and was paid more than £280,000 in gross pay from employers for the months where he had more than one full-time job, the court heard.

Prosecutor Lucy Organ told jurors at Southwark Crown Court: ‘This defendant, Kashim Chowdhury, between 2020 and 2023, obtained and held a series of full-time employments in the civil service and associated public bodies at the same time.

‘By that I mean he obtained and had more than one full-time job at the same time and was being paid for more than one full-time job at the same time.

‘He achieved this – having concurrent full-time jobs – by making false representations, false declarations, concerning his existing employment status and employment history.

‘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 prosecutor added: ‘He also made, the prosecution say, continuing implied false representations by having a full-time job and not revealing to his employers that he had other full-time employment.

‘In fact, members of the jury, you will hear evidence that at times he positively lied about his employment history and having other full-time jobs.

‘He concealed that he had multiple simultaneous employments from his employers.

‘As a result, he was paid for multiple full-time jobs at the same time.

‘We say those jobs were obtained by false representation – fraud – and made a financial gain for himself from this fraud.’

His alleged fraud started in June 2020 – three months after the Covid pandemic struck – when he was applying for jobs in government departments despite working full-time for the local council.

Chowdhury, of Whitechapel in east London, denies nine counts of fraud.

The court heard he also worked for the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency, the East London NHS Trust and Tower Hamlets council.

He appeared in the dock wearing a blue open-neck shirt and a dark jacket, having turned up to court covering his face.

The trial is due to last for around three weeks.

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