Yesterday I wrote about my quest to get information from the FSA about its investigation into individuals involved in the collapse of split capital investment trusts.

My bug bear was that I had asked the regulator for information on subjects such as the cost of the investigation - which did not result in any charges being brought but just an agreement with some individuals to voluntarily not practice for up to 30 months.

The FSA was late in responding to my freedom of information request so I decided to blog it. Low and behold I received an answer sharpish.

I was told that it would not be possible to give me any information because: 'There are four paper files in relation to correspondence over the last three months in respect of the FSA's investigation into the Splits Capital Trusts. In total we hold over 600 boxes of documents in relation to our investigation, together with electronic files, and the information you have requested is spread across these files.'

The sheer work of sifting through 600 boxes apparently makes it impossible to answer questions such as: Why did the FSA decide not to pursue any individuals through the legal system?

I don't know where to start. Firstly, these 600 boxes. Is the regulator seriously saying that there is no filing system to aid the search. Do FSA staff simply toss sheets of paper into random boxes so that anyone looking for a file has to search through all of them in some vast underground vault?.

Admittedly, the nice girl at the Freedom of Information office, Sandra Collins, was smart enough to spot my ploy of getting various Citywire journalists to send separate requests in order to avoid passing the threshold which states that requests can only be answered if it costs less than £450.

I'm going to try a new tack and ask just one question: How much did the years of investigating which resulted in nothing cost the FSA? Surely this is not kept in a file but in a spreadsheet which one would imagine can be searched. I will address my question to Mr F Kafka.