FORMER charity trustees say they ‘strongly deny’ allegations of serious misconduct after the Charity Commission said they paid £1 million of charitable funds to their own companies.

The commission permanently removed Matthew Dimbylow, a former Paralympian footballer from Sandiway, as a trustee of Dream It, Believe It, Achieve It (DIBIAI), while his wife Emma Dimbylow has signed an undertaking not to act as a trustee again.

The Charity Commission said both Matt and Emma Dimbylow employed a commercial lottery company to run a scratch card lottery for charity DIBIAI between 2011 and 2014, raising a considerable amount of money.

After an investigation, the commission concluded only £300,000 of the money raised went to charitable purposes unconnected with the Dimbylows.

In a joint statement, Matthew and Emma Dimbylow said they strongly denied they were responsible for serious mismanagement and misconduct.

They said: “Throughout our time as directors and trustees of DIBIAI, we sought only to provide disabled individuals with access to, and the opportunity of participating in, sporting activities.

“As a family, we are all too familiar with the expensive and under-resourced industry of disability sport, and DIBIAI was incorporated purely to raise funds to benefit such individuals.

“DIBIAI raised funds through a successful lottery campaign.

“A large proportion of that fund-raising was completed before DIBIAI obtained charitable status, and all applicable laws and regulations were followed throughout.

“During the Charity Commission’s inquiry, it approached the Fundraising Regulator and the Gambling Commission.

“Neither of those two regulators found any issues of misconduct and/or mismanagement against the way in which the lottery was conducted and took no action.

“We co-operated fully with the Charity Commission throughout its inquiry and spent a large amount of time providing highly detailed evidence to the commission in order to prove that all payments were made in furtherance of DIBIAI’s charitable objectives.

“Regrettably, the Charity Commission did not take the opportunity to review much of this evidence.

“We would like to reiterate that the Charity Commission did not bring a successful claim to recover funds through the court.

“It did commence proceedings against us both personally in 2019.

“Our decision to settle that dispute with the Charity Commission was taken simply due to the fact that we would not have been able to afford to litigate against the deep pockets of the Charity Commission.

“We are greatly disappointed by the way in which the Charity Commission’s report seeks to portray us.

“We believe the report’s conclusions to be totally unjustified.

“But we also wish to express our genuine anguish that the charities, organisations and individuals benefitting from the donations and grants made by DIBIAI throughout the years will no longer receive the funding they so desperately require.”