How a civil servant got away with juggling five jobs for so long
Summary
A UK court found civil servant Kashim Chowdhury guilty of nine fraud counts after he held overlapping government jobs and fraudulently received more than £284,000 in public money. The case exposed gaps in the Civil Service’s hiring checks: departments made hiring decisions separately, and a government database check did not catch the overlap until 2024.Key Facts
- Chowdhury held eight overlapping full-time public-sector jobs between 2020 and 2023.
- In May 2023, he was being paid to work for five government bodies while on sick leave from the UK Health Security Agency.
- His contracts called for a total of 183 work hours per week.
- He fraudulently earned more than £284,000 and received £350,000 in total during the period described.
- Chowdhury left the Civil Service in September 2023.
- The government’s National Fraud Initiative detected the overlapping jobs in 2024 through checks of Civil Service databases, including payroll records.
- Chowdhury did not disclose on government job application forms that he was already a civil servant.
- A judge said Chowdhury would face a “very substantial custodial sentence”; the article does not report a sentence.
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