DOJ drops charges against second client of AG Pam Bondi's brother Brad

For the second time in less than a month, the U.S. Justice Department has dropped charges against a client represented by Brad Bondi, the brother of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

This time, federal prosecutors in Missouri decided to dismiss felony wire fraud charges against property developer Sid Chakraverty. Chakraverty had been accused in 2024 of misrepresenting his hiring of women- and minority-owned subcontractors for a housing development project to secure favorable tax incentives. Prosecutors under the Biden administration had initially pursued criminal charges against him.

However, just weeks after career prosecutors maintained that Chakraverty should face penalties for the alleged fraud, Thomas Albus, the newly appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri (a Trump appointee), filed a motion with the court on Wednesday announcing that the government had decided to drop the charges. Albus explained that Chakraverty and his co-defendant had agreed to pay restitution for the taxes involved, and that, as a result, it was in the government’s best interest to end the prosecution. Albus also noted that this decision aligned with a department-wide policy shift, which aims to avoid prosecuting cases involving violations of race- and sex-based presumptions, like those associated with St. Louis’ disadvantaged business enterprise program.

This development follows a similar case in Florida, where federal prosecutors dropped charges against another client of Brad Bondi’s, Carolina Amesty. Amesty had faced charges related to alleged COVID relief fraud, and prosecutors decided to dismiss those charges after Bondi’s involvement in the case.

Brad Bondi officially joined Chakraverty’s legal team in July 2025, but spokespeople for Chakraverty and his co-conspirator, Victor Alston, clarified that Bondi had been working on the case even before that, suggesting that his legal team had already been making compelling arguments to dismiss the case prior to the decision. They credited Bondi and his colleagues for highlighting the weaknesses in the case, which ultimately led to the suspension of the policy in St. Louis that formed the basis of the charges.

Bondi’s growing success in having charges dropped has led to some concerns about a potential conflict of interest due to his familial ties to Attorney General Pam Bondi. However, a spokesperson for the Justice Department firmly denied any such conflict, asserting that the decision to drop the charges was made through appropriate channels, and that the Attorney General was not involved in the process.

Source: abc NEWS