Image source: PA Media
In May 2023, the pale appearance of a British government employee aroused the suspicions of his manager during a video call, after she noticed that a white powder began to disappear from his face as he sweated, revealing his natural skin color.
The employee, Kashim Chaudhry, had been on sick leave from his work at the British Health Security Agency for about three months, and his direct manager, Alisha Adams, held the call to discuss a plan to help him gradually return to work.
At the beginning of the call, Chaudhry began coughing and waving tissues in front of the camera, trying to show how sick he was, but what caught Adams' attention was the extreme paleness that appeared on his face.
"He was sweating, and the powder appeared to be wiped off his face, making his skin appear darker underneath, and his neck was also darker," Adams testified in court.
Adams accused him of wearing white makeup to look sick, which Choudhury denied in court.
Fraudulent behavior that has remained under the radar
But what Adams did not know at the time was that the NHS was not Chaudhry's only employer.
In the same month, he was being paid for full-time positions at four other government agencies: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.
Under his employment contracts, he was supposed to work 183 hours a week, more than the total 168 hours per week, and in this way he fraudulently obtained more than £284,000 of taxpayers' money.
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In total, Chaudhry held eight full-time jobs in the public sector, with work periods overlapping between 2020 and 2023. During that period, the government employee, who held a relatively modest job rank, earned about 350,000 pounds sterling.
Shortly after her call with Choudhury, Adams discovered that he had used a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs email to access the meeting, and when she confronted him about it, he put it down to a technical error.
"I thought he was lying," Adams told the jury at Southwark Criminal Court, raising her suspicions to officials higher up in the hierarchy.
But his fraudulent practices remained undetected, and Chaudhry continued to hold multiple government jobs until September 2023, when he left the civil service.
His matter was not revealed until 2024, through the British government's National Anti-Fraud Initiative, which conducts reviews of civil servant data, including salary records, once every two years to detect any irregularities or discrepancies.
On Monday, the court found Chaudhry guilty of nine counts of fraud, and the judge told him he faced a “very long” prison sentence.
Chaudhry, 56 years old, came to court daily alone, and although he was married, none of his family members or friends appeared to support him during the trial sessions.
He was often seen walking through the corridors of the court building carrying two plastic bags and wearing a woolen hat decorated with a small ball on his head.
He sometimes appeared confused while testifying in court.
Chaudhry, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2015, said that he took on this large number of jobs for fear of losing his source of livelihood, after he went through experiences of job instability. He added that he was forced to leave his job at the British Ministry of Education in 2013.
He explained that he was not thinking clearly when he applied for employment, "because of the stress, distress, and psychological trauma that I was suffering from, and the state of panic that gripped me at the time."
However, the Public Prosecution considered that his actions were “deliberate” and involved “intentional deception,” stressing that he exploited the system to achieve financial gains.
Image source: Elizabeth Cook/PA Media
However, this case raises important questions about the civil service system in Britain. How was Chaudhry able to continue his practices throughout these years without being exposed?
Part of the answer is that the British civil service's human resources system is not centralized. Chaudhry concealed in government job applications the fact that he was a civil servant, and the systems were unable to detect his duplication.
Hannah Keenan, a researcher at the Institute of Government Studies, says the system has clearly failed on this issue. “Ministries and government departments make employment decisions independently of each other, without systems linking them,” she said.
She continued: “But the failure of this model and the institutional culture surrounding it should not be surprising, as we have known for a long time that some poorly performing employees are able to evade oversight by moving between jobs.”
More than 550,000 people work in the British Civil Service, many of whom are stationed in offices in the Whitehall area in central London. They are responsible for implementing government policies and managing the country's daily administrative affairs.
Another factor that helped Chaudhry hide his fraudulent practices was that he worked entirely from his home in East London, where he lived with his mother.
In 2023, his mother was suffering from dementia and terminal cancer, and Chaudhry informed his employers that he needed to stay home to care for her.
But instead of reducing his workload to devote himself to caring for his mother, he took on more jobs, and to hide his impossible-to-stick work schedule, he obtained sick leave certificates from his GP.
In April 2023, Chaudhry was on sick leave from four government agencies, namely the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the British Health Security Agency, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Food Standards Agency, due to a condition he described as “mixed anxiety and depression disorder.”
Although medical certificates were presented to the jury, no evidence was presented explaining the causes of this disorder, or indicating that a specialized psychological evaluation of Chaudhry was conducted during that period.
His illness did not prevent him from taking up a new job, this time at the British Ministry of the Interior, and he did not inform the Ministry of his illness, or that he was working for other agencies at the same time.
It was not surprising that a number of his direct managers spoke before the jury about his poor job performance.
The testimony of Dan McCartney, who managed Choudhury in the Ministry of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was one of the most prominent testimonies against him, as he said that he had to “tell him what to do all the time,” noting that Choudhury kept his camera off during video meetings for four months, citing technical problems.
But because Chaudhry was not subject to any formal criteria for evaluating performance in the ministry, he obtained a permanent job there, and continued to work there for two years.
In September 2023, it was found that Chaudhry had more than 40,000 pounds sterling in his bank accounts, in addition to large investments, including British savings bonds that award prizes through a draw, known as “Premium Bonds,” worth 45,000 pounds sterling.
The British Civil Service is risk averse
A recent survey of 1,700 government employees, conducted by the independent research center ReState, showed that 76 percent of participants believe that the British civil service does not deal effectively with poorly performing employees.
A former senior civil service official told the BBC that the institutional culture prevailing in large sectors of the government apparatus avoids dealing with problems of job performance.
He added: "Government institutions in Whitehall have been aware for many years of the need to be less risk-averse, and this has become more important with the reduction in the size of the civil service and the expansion of the use of artificial intelligence technologies."
He continued: "But the fear factor should not be underestimated, whether from entering into prolonged employment disputes, or from being accused of wasting taxpayers' money if the civil service follows the approach of large companies in the private sector, which get rid of poorly performing employees by providing financial compensation and agreements to terminate their services by mutual consent."
For his part, a spokesman for the British Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Kashim Chaudhry took advantage of the trust placed in him as a public servant, and defrauded taxpayers out of approximately £285,000. He will now, rightly, face the consequences of his actions.”
He added: "This conviction was the result of a comprehensive and thorough investigation led by the Ministry's Anti-Fraud and Investigations Team, and it sends a clear message that fraud on public funds will not be tolerated, and that those responsible will be held accountable."
The spokesman stressed that the ministry will pursue "all available means to recover the money that Chaudhry obtained from his crimes, on behalf of taxpayers."
Choudhury's case highlights a broader phenomenon known as "secret multi-jobbing", where some people hold several jobs at the same time without their employers knowing, and websites have even appeared offering advice on how to hide this from employers.
The spread of this phenomenon is due to the increasing number of workers working from home.
In its latest report, the British government's National Anti-Fraud Initiative revealed 23 cases of this kind across London, which resulted in the disbursement of excess salaries worth 500,000 pounds sterling in just a few months.
In parallel with the fraud case, Chaudhry is engaged in a legal dispute with his three brothers, who accuse him of exerting pressure and intimidation on their mother to force her to transfer ownership of half of her house, worth 2.1 million pounds sterling, to his name during the last days of her life. Chaudhry denies these accusations.
During his criminal trial, Chaudhry sometimes seemed confused by what he heard, and attributed the series of lies he wove to the psychological traumas he had been exposed to.
But the jury, which took seven hours to reach its verdict, concluded that his actions were motivated by personal gain, by pocketing tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money.
Chaudhry now faces a long prison sentence.
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