Angel Food Ministries, a charity with headquarters in Good Hope, Ga., that sells discount groceries, paid almost $2.5-million in compensation in 2006 to the family that founded and operates the group, reports the York Daily Record, in Pennsylvania.

The group’s chief executive officer, Wesley Joseph Wingo, received a pay increase from $69,598 in 2005 to $588,529 in 2006. His family also borrowed money from the charity, owing more than $1-million in loans by the end of 2007, and the numbers are raising questions among charity watchdogs.

A spokesman for the group said that salaries were appropriate for a charity of its size and that the compensation and loans were intended to reduce personal debt the Wingo family incurred when it founded the organization.