Heeding the call of Senate Ag Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow and Ranking Member Pat Roberts – MF Global Trustee Louis Freeh has dropped plans to pay bonuses to MF Global executives. Stabenow says it would have been absolutely outrageous if bonuses were paid to the very people who were in charge as MF Global went bankrupt and lost its customers’ money. Stabenow notes MF Global’s bankruptcy was the eighth largest in U.S. history and resulted in a loss of as much as 1.6-billion dollars of the firm’s customers’ money. Thousands of farmers, ranchers and small business owners are still owed tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stabenow says she’s glad Freeh agreed the people in charge should be held accountable rather than being rewarded with bonuses.

Stabenow and Roberts sent a letter to Mr. Freeh signed by all of their Ag Committee colleagues on March 15th – urging him to drop any proposal to award bonuses to top executives. They followed up by cosponsoring a bipartisan resolution opposing the bonuses – which passed the Senate unanimously on March 27th.