A civil servant allegedly exploited working from home and used sick notes to juggle five taxpayer-funded jobs at once, signing up for more hours than there are in a week, a court heard.
Kashim Chowdhury, 55, had signed up for 183 hours of work a week — 15 more than there are in seven days — jurors were told. He allegedly kept the jobs under wraps using remote working and sick leave. Prosecutors claimed he put on white makeup to appear ill during a video call with a manager.
£350,000 earned from eight employers
Between February 2020 and September 2023, he earned £350,000 from eight employers, the court heard. Chowdhury, of Whitechapel, east London, denied nine counts of fraud.
Prosecutor Lucy Organ alleged he lied when applying for full-time roles, concealing other jobs he already held across government departments and public bodies. They claim Chowdhury “exploited” the working-from-home culture that took hold during the Covid pandemic. He told employers he needed to be at home to look after his “unwell” mother.
White makeup exposed in Teams call
As the workload mounted, his performance allegedly began to slip. Ms Organ said it became “too much to cope with”, and he took sick leave from some roles while carrying on with others. The court heard he was signed off from some roles due to “mixed anxiety and a depressive disorder”, but did not submit his sick note to every employer and remained off sick in some jobs while working in others.
One manager arranged a Teams meeting to discuss his absence in May 2023, when he was holding five full-time jobs at the same time, according to prosecutors. His UK Health Security Agency manager, Aleesha Adams, saw him “coughing and blowing his nose” on camera. But she noticed his white face did not match the colour of his neck. Make-up on his forehead then began to separate, exposing the skin beneath, jurors were told.
Ms Organ said: “There could be no doubt about it, the defendant had applied make up to his face for this Teams meeting to try and pretend to his line manager that he was unwell. This almost laughable incident demonstrates, we say, quite how far the defendant was willing to go in his deceit.”
Multiple roles across government
The court heard there was another apparent giveaway — Chowdhury had joined the call through a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) email account. Ms Organ said he had “messed up” by using the address and allegedly suggested to Ms Adams that it could be an old one. The prosecutor described the explanation as a “lie” intended to hide his other employment.
Jurors heard Chowdhury began working for Tower Hamlets Council in February 2020. He took a job with Defra in April 2021 without leaving the council. For more than a year, he worked the two positions alongside each other. A four-month stint with East London NHS Trust in 2022 was his third position.
Leaving the council did not put an end to the overlapping employment. While remaining at Defra, he allegedly secured further roles with 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, the jury heard.
By May 2023, he was allegedly drawing pay from five full-time positions. Prosecutors said Chowdhury made false representations about his employment when seeking the jobs. She told the jury: “Clearly, he would not have been employed by his employers if they had known he had multiple other full-time jobs.”
The alleged frauds emerged after the National Fraud Initiative raised the alarm with Defra, jurors were told. Ms Organ said his three bank accounts received more than £300,000 between March 2020 and September 2023, while nearly £250,000 was paid out. The trial continues.
