In May 2023, a manager at the UK Health Security Agency noticed during a video call with an employee on sick leave for three months what appeared to be white powder coming off his face as he sweated, revealing his natural skin tone, something he later denied in court. It was the first suspicion in one of the strangest fraud cases in the British civil service.
The employee, Kashem Chowdhury, was not working only for the Health Security Agency: in the same month he was being paid for full-time jobs at four other government bodies — the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.
Under his contracts he was supposed to work 183 hours a week, more than the 168 hours in a week. In total he held eight full-time government jobs that overlapped between 2020 and 2023, receiving about £350,000, more than £284,000 of it fraudulently.
Although his manager raised her suspicions with her superiors, he was only caught in 2024 through the National Fraud Initiative, which checks civil service staff data and payroll records every two years for inconsistencies.
On Monday, Southwark Crown Court in London convicted Chowdhury, 56, of nine counts of fraud, and the judge told him he faces a “very long” prison sentence. The case raises serious questions about weak verification in government hiring in the age of remote work.
Source: BBC Arabic
