Trustees of Otto Bremer Trust can keep their jobs for now but with new restrictions, a judge ruled Monday, as they continue to face other lawsuits over their attempt to sell the trust's biggest investment, Bremer Financial Corp.
The Minnesota Attorney General's Office this summer asked a court in St. Paul to put new people in charge of the Bremer Trust, one of the state's largest philanthropies, alleging that the current trustees have not acted in the best interests of the trust and engaged in self-dealing. The trust owns but doesn't manage the firm best known as Bremer Bank, Minnesota's fourth-largest bank.
In the ruling Monday, Ramsey County Judge Robert Awsumb declined to remove the three trustees on an emergency basis, saying a full hearing would be needed to vet the merits.
He ordered both the trust and the state to meet and discuss scheduling future proceedings, including potential mediation. In the meantime, Awsumb ordered restrictions that he said would protect the trust's assets and ensure the trustees operate transparently.
He ordered the trustees' compensation reverted to a level last approved by the court in 2017. He prohibited them from selling any more stock of Bremer Financial without his approval and told them to complete a course on the fiduciary duties of trustees of charitable trusts.
"By this order, the Court seeks to implement interim measures which protect the assets of the Trust, compel full transparency of the Trustee's administration, and ensure the continued philanthropic activities of the Trust in this time when its charity is perhaps more needed than at any time in recent decades," Awsumb wrote in a memo accompanying the ruling.
"With these safeguards in place, the issue of the potential removal of the Trustees is best addressed following a full evidentiary hearing and after careful consideration of all of the evidence received at that hearing."
A lawyer for the trustees declined to comment.