For the second time in less than a month, the Justice Department on Wednesday abruptly dropped charges against a client represented by Brad Bondi, the brother of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Federal prosecutors in Missouri this week agreed to voluntarily dismiss an indictment against Sid Chakraverty, a property developer who faced felony wire fraud charges. Prosecutors under the Biden administration accused Chakraverty in 2024 of lying about hiring women- and minority-owned subcontractors on a housing development in order to allegedly secure favorable tax incentives.
As recently as three weeks ago, career prosecutors held that Chakraverty should face criminal penalties for his alleged scheme.
MORE: A woman accused of fraud hired the AG’s brother as her lawyer. Months later, DOJ dropped charges
But on Wednesday, the newly installed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Thomas Albus, a Trump appointee, filed court papers informing the judge overseeing the case that the “defendants have agreed to make restitution of the taxes” and that it is therefore “prudent for the government to end this criminal prosecution.”
In his letter to the judge, Albus explained that the decision to drop charges was part of a department-wide directive to no longer prosecute cases against those accused of violating “race- and sex-based presumptions like the [disadvantaged business enterprise] program” in St. Louis.
The development comes just weeks after federal prosecutors in Florida agreed to drop charges against Carolina Amesty, another client of Brad Bondi, who faced two counts of theft of government property related to alleged COVID relief fraud.
Amesty had hired Brad Bondi in December 2024, shortly after his sister, Pam Bondi, was tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with reporters during a briefing with President Donald Trump in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Brad Bondi officially joined on as Chakraverty’s attorney in July 2025, according to the court docket. But James McCarthy, a spokesperson for Chakraverty and his alleged co-conspirator, Victor Alston, said Brad Bondi had been working on the case since prior to the 2024 election.
“[Sid and Vic] credit the wisdom and integrity of their counsel, especially Brad Bondi, Renato Mariotti, and Jeff Jensen, who righteously and compellingly made clear that this case should never have been brought and that it could not withstand the scrutiny of either a jury of St. Louisans or the jurists of the federal courts,” McCarthy said in a statement to ABC News. “That was clear when, just two days after the team filed its motion to dismiss, the City of St. Louis suspended the untenable and unconstitutional policy that formed the entire basis of the unjust charges against Sid and Vic.”
A spokesperson for Bondi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brad Bondi’s recent success in defending clients from charges brought by the Justice Department has raised the concern for some that his proximity to the attorney general may present the appearance of a conflict of interest.
A Justice Department spokesperson asserted that Pam Bondi’s relationship with her brother had no bearing on the outcome of these cases, telling ABC News in a statement that “this decision was made through proper channels and the Attorney General had no role in it.”
