A 55-year-old British man is on trial in the United Kingdom accused of holding five government jobs at the same time. His name is Kasim Chowdhury. To keep his other jobs secret, he took sick leave, kept his camera off in online meetings and put white make-up on his face to look ill, the court has heard.
Chowdhury lives in Whitechapel, east London, the BBC reported. He is accused of working for several government bodies at once from February 2020 to September 2023 and earning about £350,000 a year.
The court was told he had jobs at the Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Department of Health and Social Care, among other government bodies.
According to the court, at one point his five jobs required 183 working hours a week, while a week has only 168 hours. Even leaving out time for rest or sleep, he could not have worked all the hours he was contracted for.
Chowdhury is on trial at Southwark Crown Court in London on nine counts of fraud. He denies all the charges.
The court heard that Chowdhury often took sick leave to hide one job from the managers of another. In online meetings he would report technical problems with his laptop or keep his camera switched off.
His supervisors told the court that he had not told them he worked anywhere else. In their assessment his work was “ineffective” and “poor”.
One strange allegation also came up at the hearing. The court was told that in a Microsoft Teams meeting about his sick leave with a manager at UKHSA, he had put white make-up on his face to look ill.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report