A civil servant who used the rise of remote working to hold several overlapping government jobs has been convicted of fraud on his 56th birthday.
Kashim Chowdhury fraudulently obtained more than £280,000 in taxpayers’ money after misleading prospective and existing employers about the other positions he held.
He exploited post-Covid home-working arrangements to manage as many as five jobs simultaneously from his £2million, four-storey Grade II-listed property in east London.
Chowdhury took sick leave and holidays in an effort to cope with the workload and conceal his activities. He was also accused of applying make-up to look ill during a video call with managers, although colleagues generally described his performance as poor.
The former project manager, who was regularly appointed to senior roles paying up to £52,000, said he had been struggling with his mental health while caring for his terminally ill mother. He denied deliberately deceiving his employers and claimed investigators had lost evidence that would have supported his defence.
However, a jury at Southwark Crown Court convicted him of nine counts of fraud after prosecutors said he had “positively lied about his employment history and having other full-time jobs”. Chowdhury stared ahead as the unanimous verdicts were delivered.
It can also now be revealed that he is embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with his siblings over the future of their late mother’s six-bedroom house near Brick Lane.
Chowdhury, whose identity was first disclosed by the Mail in April last year, will be sentenced at a later date. Fraud carries a maximum prison sentence of ten years.
The disgraced former Whitehall worker, photographed exclusively by the Mail, tried to hide his face while entering Southwark Crown Court during his trial
Kashim Chowdhury has been found guilty of fraud after taking on several civil service jobs at the same time
The court heard that Chowdhury began working for Tower Hamlets Council in February 2020 before taking a second position with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in April 2021.
He had passed the Government’s vetting procedures, which are intended to prevent unsuitable candidates from entering Whitehall.
By September 2023, Chowdhury had accepted nine separate full-time roles with government departments and public bodies, including the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care.
At the peak of the arrangement, in May 2023, he was simultaneously receiving salaries from five full-time jobs without his employers’ knowledge.
On paper, his contracts required him to work 183 hours each week—15 hours more than the 168 hours contained in a seven-day period.
One of those roles was with the UK Health Security Agency, where his performance during a seven-month period between 2022 and 2023 was described as “very poor” by his project line manager.
Carol Hedland, a former colleague, told jurors: “I would describe his conduct, attitude, productivity, performance and obviously attendance as being very poor.”
She said she attempted to address the issue with Chowdhury by telephone, but he accused her of “badgering” him before ending the call.
A former Home Office colleague said Chowdhury repeatedly missed Microsoft Teams meetings and acted “incredibly rudely” during a review of his poor performance while he was still on probation.
Richard Arkless said Chowdhury told him that offers of support were merely for show and that he had no interest in the role.
“He then went on sick again. He had not improved his conduct; in fact, it diminished,” Mr Arkless said.
Former colleagues told the Mail that Chowdhury lived a reclusive lifestyle and did not appear extravagant. The court heard, however, that he had accumulated £300,000 during the three-year period covered by the fraud case.
Prosecutor Lucy Organ said Chowdhury had taken advantage of “decent, honest people who do not think you would have two full-time jobs at the same time”.
She asked the court whether it was acceptable to hold two full-time jobs concurrently for a year.
After again referring to his poor mental health at the time, Chowdhury said it had never occurred to him that having two full-time jobs simultaneously was a problem.
Ms Organ told jurors that Chowdhury could not openly acknowledge the arrangement was dishonest because he understood that reasonable people would view it that way. Instead, she said, he claimed it had never crossed his mind.
Chowdhury is also facing a civil claim from his siblings over their late mother’s £2million home near Brick Lane
Chowdhury denied fraud and said he was dealing with mental health problems while caring for his terminally ill mother
She added: “It very much did cross his mind. He repeatedly tried to conceal it. You only try to hide something if you know there is something wrong with what you are doing.”
Chowdhury denied acting dishonestly. He said he had failed to disclose some of his overlapping employment because he was suffering from stress, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder linked to an earlier job.
He told jurors: “I wasn’t checking what I was saying or doing on those forms. I just wanted to hit the submit button.”
Chowdhury accepted that some employment forms had not been completed accurately, but insisted: “I do not believe there was criminal intent.”
He said the various jobs had provided “a distraction” from personal problems, including the worsening condition of his mother.
The employment also gave him “a link to the outside world”, he claimed, despite working almost entirely from home and frequently declining to switch on his camera for meetings or attend staff away days.
Chowdhury told the jury that criticism of his work had been unfair.
He nevertheless accepted that it would have been impossible to complete the contracted hours required by several jobs at once.
“Practically, you can never do that. The number of hours is impossible,” he said.
He maintained, however, that the roles were assessed on completing projects and producing results rather than on the number of hours spent logged in.
The court heard that between January 19 and April 15, 2022, Chowdhury held three jobs at the same time with Tower Hamlets Council, Defra and East London NHS Foundation Trust.
Together, the contracts required 110 hours of work each week.
Ms Organ asked whether he had managed to fulfil that commitment.
“On paper that is an impossibility, but in practice different arrangements were made,” Chowdhury replied. “The work was not time-based. It was mainly outputs-based.”
Another colleague at the UK Health Security Agency told the court that she believed Chowdhury had faked illness during a video call while on sick leave.
Line manager Aleesha Adams said he had been coughing, blowing his nose and holding tissues up to the camera to demonstrate how unwell he was.
“I was surprised to see he was wearing what I thought was white make-up,” she said.
Ms Adams said the substance appeared to run or disappear as Chowdhury began to sweat.
Chowdhury denied wearing make-up and insisted that he had genuinely been ill.
His multiple employment arrangements came to light after an internal audit in 2022-23 found that he had failed to disclose his full work history when applying for the roles.
The National Fraud Initiative, a Cabinet Office unit, began investigating. Defra investigators later took over after discovering that Chowdhury had joined an internal UKHSA meeting using a laptop supplied by Defra.
Police became involved, and Chowdhury was arrested in July 2023.
The court heard that he kept a blue notebook containing passwords, login details and the names of his numerous line managers as he attempted to keep track of the deception.
Chowdhury also claimed that mobile phones and laptops lost during the police investigation contained evidence that could have helped prove his innocence. The Crown accepted that the devices had been lost.
“It covered my entire defence in relation to these proceedings. It would have enabled me to challenge the prosecution,” he said.
“My entire defence has been wiped out as a result.
“I have had to come to these proceedings with only my oral testimony and my memory.”
Chowdhury is also facing legal action from his siblings, who allege that he pressured their terminally ill mother into transferring part-ownership of her home to him before her death.
His older brothers, Abdul and Anis Chowdhury, and sister Fowzia Hussain claim that a Declaration of Trust, a Deed of Gift and a Land Registry transfer were all “the product of undue influence”. They say Chowdhury feared he would receive nothing after their mother, Faijun Nessa, died in July 2023.
Chowdhury said he had been his mother’s sole carer and that she had made the decision freely after obtaining independent legal advice.
The dispute was heard in the High Court while Chowdhury was giving evidence in his fraud trial at Southwark Crown Court, approximately a mile away.
The unusual circumstances led High Court judge Amanda Hardy KC to impose reporting restrictions on the civil proceedings until the criminal trial had concluded. His siblings had all accused Chowdhury of dishonesty.
Chowdhury told the High Court that his mother, who could not read or write in English or her native Bengali, had initiated the preparation of the documents, sought her own legal advice and kept him entirely unaware of the details and her intentions.
He said his only wish had been to secure somewhere to live.
Chowdhury also claimed that his mother had explained her intentions to many friends, although he could not say why none of those friends or any of the solicitors involved had been called to support his account.
Aidan Briggs, representing the claimants, suggested that Chowdhury’s mother had merely done what he instructed and that he had coerced her into signing the documents.
Chowdhury replied that, if any coercion had taken place, his mother would have told numerous people. He said there was no evidence that she had ever said he was coercing her.
As the family dispute intensified, Chowdhury told the judge that his mother had wanted to protect him.
“Any stress was entirely caused by my siblings in this matter—they descended on this property for one reason, it was greed, and my mother knew that,” he said.
“My mum was an intelligent woman. She said she had experienced things like this and wanted my future safeguarded.”
He added: “All I said was that I wanted a roof over my head, and that my siblings wanted proceeds from this. I never wanted a single penny.”
The court heard that Mrs Nessa, a devout Muslim, had previously wanted the property divided under Sharia principles, under which male heirs receive twice the share allocated to female heirs.
The judge is expected to issue her ruling at a later date.
