ST. PAUL — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is asking a court to remove trustees of the Otto Bremer Trust, after an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the trustees’ sale of Bremer Financial Corporation shares. It was a move that could have have an impact on the future of Minnesota’s fourth-largest bank, which has a location in Marshall. The trust and members of the Bremer Financial Board have been in a legal dispute over attempts to sell the company.

In an Aug. 12 statement, Ellison said he was petitioning a Ramsey County judge to remove trustees Brian Lipschultz, Daniel Reardon and Charlotte Johnson, and appoint interim trustees. The petition also seeks measures to prevent “ongoing harm” to the Otto Bremer Trust.

Ellison accused the trustees of acting recklessly and in their own interest in their attempt to sell the trust’s Bremer Financial Corporation shares.

“Otto Bremer directed that the trust in his name not be used for ‘any purpose’ other than charitable. The trustees’ actions have abused his trust and Minnesotans’ trust,” Ellison said in a statement.

“I do not take this action lightly,” Ellison said. “But as the chief law officer of the state and supervisor of charitable trusts in Minnesota, I have the duty to make sure charitable assets are used properly and for the benefit of the public, not the private aims and personal enrichment of the trustees. Because the trustees’ misconduct is particularly serious, it requires particularly serious action by my office.”

In a report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the trustees said they would fight the move.

Ellison is proposing that the court appoint three interim trustees, Pamela Alexander, Marcia Avner, and Carleen Rhodes. Alexander is a retired Hennepin County District Court judge, Avner is a former public policy director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, and Rhodes is the former president and CEO of the Saint Paul Foundation and the Minnesota Community Foundation.