Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in a news release late Monday that a proposal by MF Global trustee Louis Freeh to award huge cash bonuses to MF Global executives to aid in the search for missing client funds following the firm’s bankruptcy “is absurd.”

“This is not your ordinary Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” Roberts said. “The process to return customer funds to their rightful owners will take years”

“This unprecedented loss of segregated customer funds may well have occurred at the direction of MF Global officials,” he said. “Any recovered funds should go to customers instead of winding up in the hands of those who mismanaged the funds in the first place.”

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said earlier in the day that he also was opposed to the payment of the bonuses.

Roberts and Tester made their statements as Craig Donohue, CEO of the CME Group, the front-line regulator of MF Global, announced he would step down. Donohue said his exit was not linked to the collapse of MF Global, Reuters reported.

“MF Global doesn't factor in at all to my thinking,” Donohure said. “I’ve been working my way toward this for quite some time.”

CME announced Donohue will leave his post when his contract expires at the end of the year, and will be replaced by CME President Phupinder Gill.