More than 300 public sector workers exposed for working multiple jobs at same time

Résumé détaillé

At his peak, Kashim Chowdhury had taken on nine different full-time positions with several government departments including the Home Office — he has now been convicted of nine counts of fraud

Hundreds of workers have been caught "polygamous working" — secretly holding multiple jobs at the same time.

The Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative has found at least 301 public sector employees are engaging in "polygamous working" since 2016 after comparing personnel data held by different government bodies. It also recovered £1.35million in fraudulent salary payments over the same ten-year period.

It comes as 56-year-old Kashim Chowdhury exploited post-Covid work-from-home culture to earn more than £28,000 of taxpayers’ cash was convicted for nine counts of fraud yesterday.

Chowdhury started working for Tower Hamlets Council in February 2022, and took a second job with Defra in April 2021, while going through the Government’s vetting process. By September 2023, he had taken on nine different full-time positions with several government departments and public bodies, including the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care.

To see more of the stories you love from The Mirror and to find them easily in Google then make us your preferred source. Free and easy-to-do, just click on the link here to find more from The Mirror at the top of your feed.

He had signed up for 183 hours of work a week — 15 more than there are in seven days, jurors were previously told. Between February 2020 and September 2023 he earned a hefty £350,000 from eight employers. He previously denied the charges.

Chowdhury kept the jobs under wraps using remote working and sick leave, in one case he put on white makeup to appear ill during a video call with a manager. The roles eventually became “too much to cope with” and he was signed off from some roles due to “mixed anxiety and a depressive disorder”, but remained off sick for some roles while working in others.

William Yarwood, the campaigns director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance ured the Government to tighten public sector workers’ employment checks.

“The fact that hundreds have reportedly been caught doing so raises serious…

Début de l'article, extrait de Daily Mirror. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.