Eight days after being re-elected to the Board of the CME Group Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert resigned. The FBI charged Hastert for concealing payments to someone he knew to hide prior acts by Hastert. The misconduct was not described in the news piece:
According to the indictment, Hastert met with the person several times around 2010 and discussed past misconduct by the former lawmaker. Eventually, Hastert agreed to pay the person $3.5 million in compensation to conceal the misconduct, the indictment said.Shortly afterward, Hastert began making cash payments to the individual, according to the indictment.
That's serious money for "misconduct." I hate to think what someone might have gotten if they were the victim of a crime by Dennis Hastert.
The Illinois Republican, who left office in 2007, was charged with structuring the withdrawal of $952,000 in cash in order to evade the requirement that banks report cash transactions over $10,000, and lying to the FBI about his withdrawals.
Hastert served on CME Group's Board since 2008 He's also on the board of Rex American Resources Group. Consider what Rex's latest proxy statement said about Hastert:
Mr. Hastert is currently also a director of CME Group, Inc., a derivatives marketplace that includes the Chicago Merchantile Exchange (CME), Board of Trade of the City of Chicago (CBOT), New York Merchantile Exchange (NYMEX) and Commodity Exchange (COMEX). Mr. Hastert is Chairman of the Compensation Committee and serves on the Governance, Nominating and Strategic Steering Committees of CME Group. Mr. Hastert’s prior government service, government leadership roles and experience in commodities markets will assist the Board and management in governmental and regulatory matters affecting our business.I'll venture Dennis Hastert treated someone like a commodity and that's why he secretly agreed to pay $3.5 million. It seems fitting that a key leader of a major financial institution would be so ethically tainted.