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Britain’s FSA Refuses To Publish Results Of Royal Bank Of Scotland Probe

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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Anger is growing throughout Britain over the refusal by the Financial Services Authority to publish the result of its investigation of the Royal Bank of Scotland failure. The FSA commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers to probe the RBS, which needed a $67.5 billion (GBP 45 billion) government bailout after the bank purchased ABN Amro for $73.5 billion (GBP 49 billion) and an $18 billion (GBP 12 billion) rights issue.

FSA cited the Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000 as the reason behind the non-publication of the investigation result. The FSA instead released Thursday a short press release that acknowledged mistakes were made by the bank administration, but said there was no law broken nor was there dishonesty among bank officials that led to the crisis.

Britons are clamoring for more transparency on the result of the probe because 83 percent of RBS is owned by taxpayers. Even Chancellor George Osborne and the current management and board of RBS have seen the report.

Because of this development, the FSA ordered a review of the Financial Services Authority’s rules. The Liberal Democrat Party joined the call that a copy of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report be furnished the parliamentary library.

What also angered the public was that Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of RBS, whose leadership of the bank was heavily criticized, got a multi-million pound pension when he left the bank.

Aside from the RBS probe, the FSA also had the two other major financial crisis players HBOs and Bradford & Bingley investigated, but the details of the two inquiries have also not been released by the agency.

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