The Financial Services Authority are to liaise with RBS to find out if Sir Fred's alleged secret affair with a senior colleague had anything to do with the bank's failure.
Taxpayers had to pour £50billion into RBS after the banking giant were brought to their knees under Sir Fred's leadership.
The bank were part-nationalised with the loss of 20,000 jobs and the Government were left with a huge financial deficit.
Last night it emerged Fred the Shred may have breached his contract by hiding his affair from the board.
But RBS bosses snubbed millions of taxpayers by refusing to confirm or deny whether they knew about his secret and kept it hidden from financial regulators.
Sir Fred's affair was only revealed on Thursday when Lib Dem peer Lord Stoneham used parliamentary privilege to flout a super-injunction covering any details of the issue being reported.
The High Court then lifted a gagging order, allowing the media to reveal that married dad-of-two Sir Fred, 52, tried to hide a "sexual relationship" - but not to name his mistress or details of the relationship.
Campaigners urgently want to know whether his affair affected or hastened the bank's dramatic downfall.
Lord Oakeshott said: "I'm very concerned the whole story should be out there, should be properly investigated and we should all learn the lessons of the collapse. This was the biggest corporate crash in British history."
Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, added: "We have a right to know the full story.
"Depending on when it happened, there are lots of ways an affair could have created the management distraction that led to RBS needing the massive bailout. " Sir Fred, who married wife Joyce in 1990, was chief executive of RBS from 2000 to 2008.
He was widely blamed for the bank's demise and became the face of the banking crisis that led to the recession.
He was nicknamed Fred the Shred because of brutal staff cuts during his time at RBS.
After it all went wrong, Sir Fred waltzed off with a £2.7million lump sum and a £700,000-a-year pension.
Grim-faced Lady Goodwin, 51, was yesterday spotted leaving the couple's £3.5million mansion in Colinton, Edinburgh, on the school run with the couple's children.
Saturday, May 21
THE British banking regulator will investigate whether Sir Fred Goodwin's sex life contributed to the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Sunday, May 15
clash between Coptic Christians and Muslims left 55 injured
A clash between Coptic Christians and Muslims left 55 injured late Saturday night in the second outbreak of sectarian violence in seven days, Egyptian interior ministry officials said.
They said that 33 Muslims and 22 Christians were injured while 28 people were arrested.
The clashes began when a small group of Muslims fired shots at hundreds of Coptic Christians staging a sit-in near the state television building. The Coptic Christians were protesting what they called negligence by the Egyptian authorities in failing to prevent last week’s street fighting that left more than a dozen people dead, more than 200 injured and two churches in flames.
At about 10 p.m. Saturday night, two Muslims fired shots at the Christians, officials said. Then groups of young men from both religions battled for hours with rocks, sticks and molotov cocktails.
Both general crime and sectarian violence have increased since the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak three months ago, as the military council running the country has struggled to rebuild the police force. A primary target of the revolution because of their past abusive practices, many police officers deserted the force or have returned timidly. Some leaders of the protests that brought down the old government suspect a counter-revolutionary conspiracy to stir up lawlessness.
On Sunday, the Coptic Christian pope told his followers to end their sit-in in the interest of preserving peace.
Tuesday, May 10
Websites are being asked to review how they track users ahead of imminent changes to privacy laws.
On 26 May European privacy laws come in to force in the UK which give people more control over what data websites gather about them.
This means changes to what websites can do with cookies - small text files used to log data about repeat visitors.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said sites need to be sure their cookies comply with the law.
Making complaints
The ICO issued guidance to firms ahead of the 26 May deadline but said that the document was a "work in progress".
"It is not offering all the answers," said an ICO spokesperson.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has drawn up the regulations firms must take to comply with the law. It is now working on the "technical solutions" firms can follow to meet the requirements it set down.
As the technical solutions are being worked on, firms are being encouraged to prepare by examining their cookies to see what purpose they fulfil and reach a decision about whether they require "informed consent" from visitors to keep using them.
This review process was important to undertake, said the spokesperson, because from 26 May the ICO is obliged to investigate any complaints it gets about the use of non-compliant cookies.
"We will look into those complaints and see what that company is doing to work towards compliance," said the ICO. Only by showing the results of this work will web firms be able to convince the ICO they are intent on complying.
The DCMS said while complaints may be investigated, it does not expect the ICO to take enforcement action until information about technical solutions has been drawn up.
Websites are being asked to review cookie policies because technical solutions involving users tweaking settings on browsing software are not going to be available by 26 May.
As a result, web firms will have to decide for themselves if consent can be obtained
when people sign up to use a site
can be put in the terms and conditions
or should be gained via a pop-up window
Third-party cookies, used by advertisers to track users across sites, are likely to be particularly problematic to review and police.
One solution, brokered by the Internet Advertising Bureau, might be the use of an icon on adverts that, when clicked, reveals information about data being gathered.
Monday, May 9
Blogger denies links to Twitter superinjunction claims
The man, who describes himself as a musician based in Liverpool, moved to distance himself from a series of messages on the social networking site which name public figures alleged to have obtained draconian gagging orders.
He also publicly sought legal advice over his own postings about celebrities’ private lives, which date back to mid-March, amid fears he could be prosecuted personally.
A self-confessed “insomniac”, he had been attracting a small following on the site for his messages – often written late at night – openly speculating about the identities of people at the centre of lurid allegations.
He was among several Twitter users who regularly posted alleged clues to the identities of public figures they claimed were the subject of gagging orders to protect their private lives.
When a separate site began posting messages on Sunday afternoon naming several celebrities, rapidly attracting tens of thousands of followers, he was widely suspected of being the originator or close to whoever was.
He had not only forwarded the Tweets to his own readers but the author of the new site listed themselves as “following” the musician’s postings, making him the only identifiable figure linked to the new site.
When Jemima Khan, the free speech campaigner, posted messages denying claims that she had taken out an injunction banning publication of pictures of herself and Jeremy Clarkson, the blogger apologised to her directly and promised to contact the author of the new site directly.
But challenged about his links to the new site, he later said that, although he was on contact with them through Twitter, he did not know who their true identity.
“To clarify, I am NOT [the author], he wrote after a series of inquiries.
"I don’t know who he is, have no connection, have been trying to tell him his page is inaccurate.”
At one point he posted a message to Mark Stephens, the prominent media lawyer who had earlier challenged him to remove his own Tweets about Miss Khan, admitting that he had openly discussed celebrities’ identities online and asking: “Think I’m all right?”
But Mr Stephens warned last night that several Twitter users who had circulated the information could potentially face prosecution.
“They are all in similar jeopardy,” he said.
“They are clearly in contempt of court, clearly these celebrities are not going to take this lying down and as a result of that I would expect that as we speak their lawyers running a trace on the people in contempt of court.”
Referring to the author of the posts on Sunday, he warned: “The individual behind this is clearly going to be tracked, his electronic fingerprints are all over it and when he gets the knock on the door I would very strongly advise that he takes a toothbrush with him.”
Wednesday, May 4
Prosecutor probes possible Dink murder-Ergenekon link
A prosecutor conducting the investigation into the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink has announced that he will be looking at possible links between the murder and Ergenekon, a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government.
Prosecutor Hikmet Usta, who is expected to give his reasoned opinion on the case in the next hearing of the trial at the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court scheduled for May 30, sent a request on Thursday to the İstanbul Police Department asking for the phone records of all 20 suspects, including hitman Ogün Samast.
He also requested an investigation into the links between the suspects and the suspects in the case of a hidden weapons cache unearthed in İstanbul's Poyrazköy district two years ago. The Poyrazköy weapons case is an Ergenekon-related investigation. They have many suspects in common, and the investigators have evidence indicating that the weapons found were meant to be used by Ergenekon.
Erdal Doğan, who was formerly a co-plaintiff in the Dink case, welcomed the decision but added that it came late. He said a similar situation applied to the Zirve murders of 2007, where three missionaries were brutally killed in Malatya. Their killers also appeared to have shady links.
Doğan said the prosecutor who initially investigated the case, Atilla Ceylan, had caused a major delay in the trial, which has been going on for four years now. “This was an important waste of time,” he said, adding: “There is obviously negligence here. Indeed, I believe it is something beyond negligence.” He said the decision to deepen the probe in the Dink investigation was a positive development but also reiterated that it indicated serious earlier negligence on the part of the prosecution.
Twenty suspects are currently on trial, charged with involvement in the murder of Dink, who was shot outside his office on Jan. 19, 2007 by a teenager who claimed he was a nationalist but later proved to have questionable connections to various individuals.
Shortly after the assassination, it came out that Erhan Tuncel, one of the suspects accused of soliciting Samast, who was 17 at the time, to murder Dink had previously acted as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department.
Yasin Hayal, another suspect facing accusations similar to those of Tuncel, was convicted in 2005 in connection with a bomb explosion at a Trabzon McDonald's in October 2004. A young girl was injured in the explosion. Hayal served only 10 months in jail, which the Dink family says is one of many reasons why it believes the suspects have connections of a different kind.
In the trial's most recent hearing, Usta said it could be possible to try the Dink suspects under Article 309 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) on “violations of the Constitution.” Usta asserts that the scope of the assassination falls under the category of terrorism in that it has caused enormous public outrage.
In related developments, two former police chiefs who served in Trabzon -- Reşat Altay and Emin Arslan -- and chief police inspector Levent Yarımel testified to a court in Rize. A prosecutor is accusing the three of various crimes ranging from negligence to even assisting the assassins prior to the murder. A court earlier ruled to dismiss the prosecutor's complaint, but the prosecutor's office appealed the ruling, putting the three men's actions once more under judicial review. The Rize court will decide whether to overturn the dismissal.
2 Russians Guilty of Killing Rights Lawyer and Journalist
A young Russian nationalist and his common-law wife were convicted Thursday in the particularly brazen murders of a prominent human rights lawyer and a journalist two years ago, as the jury sided with prosecutors who argued that the ideologically driven defendants considered their victims enemies of Russia.
The slain lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, 34, had worked to jail violent nationalists and had once pursued a murder case against the man convicted of both fatal shootings, which were carried out at close range in broad daylight on a busy Moscow street near the Kremlin. The journalist, Anastasia Baburova, 25, was a freelancer who happened to be interviewing Mr. Markelov. Both had connections to the loose network of Russian groups opposed to the nationalist and neo-fascist groups that have proliferated here since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Members of the country’s beleaguered human rights community immediately praised the verdict as a rare victory for justice in a country where high-profile murders are rarely solved.
“Our long experience allows us to distinguish between cases fabricated by the secret services and law enforcement agencies and cases that these services and structures investigate conscientiously,” Oleg P. Orlov, the head of the rights group Memorial said in a statement. “Today we can confirm that the real killers and not someone arbitrarily accused were seated on the defendants’ bench.”
The nationalist, Nikita Tikhonov, 30, was found guilty of the fatal shootings, while his common-law wife, Yevgenia Khasis, 26, served as lookout. Both had denied any guilt, and both slashed their wrists this week in what appeared to be an attempt to delay the verdict.
Sentencing is expected next month, but their lawyers vowed to appeal.
Mr. Markelov’s death added to a growing toll from the community of rights activists here. He had worked closely with Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist who was gunned down in October 2006, and also with Natalya Estemirova, the rights worker who was kidnapped and murdered in July 2009.
There have been no convictions in those killings.
Ms. Baburova worked at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where Ms. Politkovskaya had also worked.
Other journalists from the paper have also met violent ends.
Vladimir Zherebenkov, a lawyer who represented Ms. Baburova’s parents, said they were “deeply satisfied.”
“They now know that the perpetrators of this crime will definitely be punished,” Mr. Zherebenkov said.
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