Scotland’s first woman bishop is facing investigation over claims that she oversaw the submission of falsified accounts and the invention of bogus meetings as part of a cover-up, prompting fresh calls for her to stand down, the Sunday Times reports.
The Rt Rev Anne Dyer was suspended as the Anglican bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney in 2022, a year after priests and church staff came forward to claim she had made their working lives intolerable.
Now, the charity watchdog is reviewing allegations that Dyer presided over five sets of “misleading and untrue accounts” and went “as far as to fabricate records of meetings that did not actually take place”.
The Sunday Times has seen internal Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) correspondence suggesting that financial records in their northeast region were in “disarray” and adding: “We are lucky that the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) have not investigated us.”
It has also emerged that Peter Murray, a senior solicitor, has stepped down as registrar and as a trustee of the Aberdeen and Orkney diocese after he was accused of breaking charity law and failing to remove himself from a “blatant” conflict of interest.
Murray, a commercial lawyer and partner with Ledingham Chalmers, considered a close ally of Dyer, is being investigated by the Law Society of Scotland after it emerged his firm received almost £200,000 in payments from the diocese.
• Full story at The Sunday Times.
