Robert Reese, grandson of the man who started Reese’s, is claiming that board members of the multibillion-dollar charitable trust that controls Hershey used trust assets to treat themselves to free golf, limousine rides, luxurious hotel stays, and extra compensation. In a filing on Thursday, Reese named 12 former and current Hershey Trust board members, including former attorney general of Pennsylvania LeRoy S. Zimmerman. Reese says that the Hershey Trust board members increased their own salaries from $35,000 in 2002 to $130,000 last year. The trust also paid three times the fair market value for a golf course that the board members now play on for free. Further, the trust allowed IRAs into its common funds in 2006, which personally benefitted a trustee, even though the trustee knew that it was against federal securities regulations.
Reese was a top executive at Hershey Co. for 25 years, and he most recently served as the trust’s president and a board member. He made this claim after failing to be re-elected to the board for another term. When asked why he decided to go public with these allegations now, he steered the conversation back to his main concern: the Milton Hershey School and School Trust.
See Hershey Charity Scandal: Robert Reese, Ex-Hershey Official, Claims Wrongdoing, The Huffington Post, Feb. 17, 2011.
Special thanks to Ann Murphy (Associate Professor of Law, Gonzaga Law School) for bringing this to my attention.
