Treasury loses five-year fight to conceal 40 names linked to collapsed bank BCCI

At first, the Treasury claimed the full release of the so-called "Sandstorm Report" into the bank's activities would "prejudice the UK's relationship with one or more other states". It later challenged the release on the grounds of "data protection", before finally losing its case at an Information Tribunal.

One of the people whose name the Government was trying to protect is Agha Hassan Abedi, the Pakastani founder and former chief executive of BCCI, who has been dead for 16 years and was named by the Tribunal as playing a "pivotal role in both the development and decline of BCCI and the fraud and deception carried out by its management".

The Treasury had also redacted the names of states such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which had been connected as clients, plus companies, such as Bear Stearns, which was a broker to the bank.

The Tribunal ruled: "There can be no possible reason for treating information about an entire country's government [or a company] as personal data."

The full publication of the report marks a victory for Professor Prem Sikka, a freedom of information campaigner, who is an accounting academic at the University of Essex. On Friday night, he accused the Government of a pointless cover-up that needlessly cost taxpayer, given that almost all of the information has now emerged through other channels.

"The UK Government has clearly been engaged in a massive cover-up and used taxpayers' monies to fight the case," Professor Sikka said. "Just look at the names of the individuals and organisations – these include well-known domestic and foreign banks from home and abroad, rulers from the Middle East, business advisers and sundry. Some of the people have already been convicted of criminal activity, but even 20 years later the Government was protecting their identity."

The Tribunal ruled that in almost all cases there was legitimate or significant public interest in disclosure, overturning an earlier ruling by the Information Commissioner.

The Treasury could not say how much the five-year process had cost, since all the legal advice and groundwork had been done in-house. It strongly denied any suggestion of a cover-up, saying: "The Treasury redacted the names of individuals referred to in the Sandstorm Report under the Data Protection Act. The Information Commissioner agreed with this decision, as the Data Protection Act requirements for fairness outweighed the right of access in the Freedom Of Information Act. Following the appeal, the Treasury decided not to challenge the Tribunal's decision to release the information from the Sandstorm Report."

BCCI collapsed in 1991 after regulators discovered many entries on its $20bn (£12.6bn) balance sheet were false. Deloitte & Touche, the principal liquidator, reckoned the overstatement was as much as $10bn. The bank's failure resulted in what was then the biggest liquidation in history, with 70,000 valid claims from 69 countries.