The civil servant accused of fraudulently earning more than £284,000 by juggling multiple public-sector jobs admitted making mistakes but said ”I do not believe there was criminal intent”.
Giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court, Kashim Chowdhury told the jury he had made mistakes because he was ”overwhelmed and stressed” and had felt ”terror and panic” at the thought of losing his livelihood.
He told the jury he had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2015 and that it had been triggered in 2021.
The 55-year-old, who is from east London, is on trial accused of nine counts of fraud. He denies acting dishonestly or intending to make a dishonest gain.
The prosecution alleges Chowdhury failed to reveal to his employers that he had other full-time employment. But Chowdhury told the jury some of his managers knew he had other jobs.
He told the court that staff and managers at the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, East London NHS Trust and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) all knew he had jobs elsewhere.
At the height of the alleged deceit, Chowdhury held five full-time jobs on full-time salaries within the public sector.
In the spring of 2023, he was employed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the UK Health Security Agency, the Food Standards Agency, the Department for Business and Trade and the Home Office. The jury was told that throughout this period he was contracted to work 183 hours a week – more than the number of hours that exist in seven days.
Each job paid a full-time wage, with Chowdhury paid £11,000 for a single month’s work in 2023.
Chowdhury said the jobs were a “lifeline” during a time his mother’s health had declined.
Asked by defence barrister Pieter Briegel what extent stress in his life was due to the number of jobs, he replied: “The jobs at the time were my lifeline at the time, that was what I survived on at that particular moment.
“And they gave me a link to the outside, they were the only thing I had to the outside world and were a distraction from what was going on in my personal life, looking after my mum at that time,” he told the court.