RBS and the Scandal of the 4/2008 rights issue

I wrote the comment below in response to this Times article dated 31/7/15 entitled:

'Taxpayer to lose millions as RBS share sale begins'

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article4513568.ece

Comment:

Everybody in the government seems to have conveniently forgotten the outrage of the April 2008 rights issue. By that time all the senior management at RBS knew how bad the financial situation at RBS was. The previous summer, Northern Rock had caused a panic in the wholesale money markets on which they relied to fund their outsized and heavily leveraged loan book. This had already had ramifications for all our other banks including RBS. But they still went ahead and issued  £12 billion pounds of new shares to unsuspecting shareholders, many of them small investors. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7359940.stm

By January of 2009, these shares were practically worthless.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4292334/Royal-Bank-of-Scotland-driven-to-the-brink-of-nationalisation.html

So, RBS made £12 billion of its shareholders money disappear into thin air in the space of 8 months. Quite a feat! Some might call it theft, and some might wonder exactly what senior members of Gordon Brown's government knew and when they knew it?

Is there any chance of anyone ever being prosecuted for this crime alone? 

I very much doubt it.