Trustees of Fife Animal Trust are guilty of misconduct after trying to sell the charity's assets, including the animals it looked after, but will not be banned from becoming trustees again, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator has said.

OSCR opened an inquiry into the charity after it became aware that the charity’s assets, including the animals, were included in the sale schedule for Fife Animal Park, a commercial business that belonged to one of the charities trustees.

The regulator issued the charity with a direction notice preventing if from selling its charity assets while it carried out an investigation.

Fife Animal Trust was set up in October 2011 and the charity’s manager and one of the three trustees owned the land that the charity operated from as well as a commercial business operating from the same place.

During the course of its investigation OSCR discovered “evidence of the charity trustees not fulfilling the their charity trustee duties which, taken as a whole, we consider to be misconduct in the administration of the charity”.

The inquiry report highlights poor financial record keeping by the charity and a failure to manage conflicts of interest.

In February 2014 Fife Council took possession of the charity’s animals under section 32 of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006. All animals have since been re-homed. The charity then asked a court to appoint a liquidator.

OSCR said it considered applying to the Court Session to disqualify the trustees but said: “After careful consideration of the circumstances and taking into account that the animals have been re-homed the ongoing liquidation of the charity and that the individuals are not trustees of any other charity, we have decided it would not be proportionate for us to take such action in this case.”