This is the civil servant accused of fraudulently holding down five full-time government jobs while working remotely.
Kashim Chowdhury, 55, allegedly concealed his existing employment to secure additional positions with several departments, including the Home Office, Defra and the Department of Health and Social Care.
Prosecutors say he claimed he needed to work from home to care for his elderly mother, while sick notes allegedly helped him manage his commitments across multiple roles.
At the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), he allegedly ended a call with his manager and accused her of “badgering” him after she confronted him over the poor standard of his work.
The court heard that Chowdhury received almost £350,000 from eight employers over three years. More than £280,000 of that gross pay was earned during periods when he held multiple full-time positions, jurors were told.
At one stage, his various contracts required him to work 183 hours a week—15 hours more than the 168 hours contained in a seven-day week.
Chowdhury was photographed leaving his mid-terrace property near east London’s fashionable Brick Lane on Thursday morning. Homes in the area can sell for millions of pounds.
Carrying a supermarket bag, he put on a face covering before heading to court.
Civil servant Kashim Chowdhury leaves his east London home on Thursday morning before attending his fraud trial
The 55-year-old faces nine fraud charges
One of the roles was with the UKHSA, where Chowdhury worked for seven months between 2022 and 2023. His project line manager described his performance during that time as “very poor”.
Carol Hedland told Southwark Crown Court: “I would describe his conduct, attitude, productivity, performance and obviously attendance as being very poor.
“The work that was produced was of substandard quality.”
She said one report prepared by Chowdhury was “very incomplete” and appeared to contain copied-and-pasted sections. Hedland told the jury she spent five hours revising it.
After discussing the report with him, she said Chowdhury ended the call and accused her of “badgering him”.
Because he worked remotely, Hedland said she remembered seeing him on camera “possibly once, no more than twice”.
“Most times the camera was off and Kashim Chowdhury said it was due to laptop issues he had logged,” she said. “But that seemed to go on for quite a while.”
Hedland also told the court that he took a fortnight’s holiday roughly two months after starting the job, despite being assigned to a time-sensitive project, and went on sick leave soon afterwards.
Prosecutor Lucy Organ told jurors that Chowdhury had “obtained and held a series of full-time employments in the civil service and associated public bodies at the same time”.
She said: “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?
‘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.
In one incident, described as ‘laughable’ by the prosecutor, Chowdhury allegedly wore white make-up during a video call with his boss to seemingly appear ill.
The court heard that Chowdhury had told employers he had to work from home to care for his ‘unwell’ mother.
But Ms Organ said his workload eventually became ‘too much to cope with’ and his performance suffered.
He then allegedly took sick leave from some jobs while continuing to work in his other positions.
He previously appeared at Southwark Crown Court wearing sunglasses and a face covering
Chowdhury is alleged to have held down multiple taxpayer-funded jobs across government simultaneously – something amounting to fraud, prosecutors said
The court heard that Chowdhury was signed off work for some jobs due to ‘mixed anxiety and a depressive disorder’, but did not hand his sick note to all his employers.
Jurors heard that the alleged frauds came to light after the National Fraud Initiative began investigating.
Chowdhury, of Whitechapel in east London, denies nine counts of fraud.
The court heard he also worked for the Department of Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency, the East London NHS Trust, and Tower Hamlets council.
He appeared in the dock wearing a purple open-neck shirt and a dark jacket.
The trial is due to last for around three weeks.