Is British business riddled with corruption? Or is the Office of Fair Trading being overzealous in seeking so much evidence of price fixing? To an outsider – a UK consumer or a foreign enterprise – the impression is that commerce is involved in an anti-competitive conspiracy.

The OFT has publicly investigated alleged cartels in milk, airfares, construction, tobacco sales and now, supermarket grocery prices. Mostly the accusations are unproved, though Britain Airways was heavily fined for agreeing fuel surcharges and some retailers confessed to colluding over the price of milk, even though they thought they were following government policy.

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The corporate world is gearing itself up for a high-profile libel action in which the winner might well also turn out to be the loser. Tesco is suing The Guardian over stories in the newspaper saying the supermarket group was avoiding £1bn tax by using offshore vehicles.

It looks set to be messy. The Guardian chairman, City bigwig Sir Paul Myners, has been dragged in because Tesco’s chairman allegedly warned him the story was incorrect. The newspaper’s chief executive is in an invidious position too because she is a non-executive director of the retailer. It turns out the Guardian Media group uses similar offshore structures for its own acquisitions.

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There is no need for senior heads to roll at the Financial Services Authority following its admission of inadequacies in policing Northern Rock. Apart from the futility of demanding ritual sacrifices, Hector Sants took over as chief executive only last summer after the Rock started to crumble, and chairman Sir Callum McCarthy is set to go in September anyway.

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The Office of Fair Trading has lost no time following HMRC’s example of bribing a foreign bank employee to dish details of Brits with Liechtenstein bank accounts: the competition regulator is offering up to £100,000 to UK employees who accuse their own companies of price-fixing.

This is what industrial espionage looks like when given the state’s seal of approval.

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Can two wrongs make a right? Is it acceptable for HM Revenue and Customs to pay money for stolen data if that information reveals details of UK tax evaders?

Britain’s tax collectors have followed their German colleagues in buying a list of UK customers with Liechtenstein bank accounts. The Germans paid more than £3m to an employee of the bank for its list and justifies the bribe by the information it has yielded. It has already produced high-profile resignations of German officials, though so far, no charges.

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Why would anyone pay money to be insulted? Companies do it because they cannot survive without credit-rating agencies. Agencies are downgrading the ratings of thousands of companies and their bonds but charging those same companies for the dubious privilege. It means the borrowers must not only pay more for their money, they have to pay the agencies that have doubted their creditworthiness.

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The initials ITV stand for Independent Television, but the commercial broadcaster is independent today only because its rival BSkyB helped block a bid for it by Virgin Media. How strange then that Sky is now to be penalised by the Competition Commission for protecting ITV’s independence.

We need not shed tears for the Murdoch empire in losing money but the regulator’s ruling on the ITV stake should worry anyone who thinks corporate finance is about strategy.

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Conrad Black’s sin was to run public companies as though they were private. He took money from the till like a corner-shop owner financing his Friday night out, rather than submitting the necessary chits. And his punishment is six years or more inside an American prison.

I worked for Black for 12 years as deputy City editor of the Daily Telegraph; I lunched with him and visited his home. He was tough but fair – keen for his newspapers to make profits but loathe to interfere editorially.

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Has there ever been a Budget speech in which the chancellor did not promise to cut red tape? And has there ever been a year when bureaucracy was reduced? It is no surprise to find that not one regulation has been amended – still less abolished – in the year since the latest regulatory reform bill was passed.

As ever, there is much talk – the Department of Trade & Industry was even renamed the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform – but little action.

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The “NatWest Three” – the three British bankers who profited at the bank’s expense from their Enron dealings – may not attract sympathy as people but many UK executives will sympathise with their plight.

How many other British directors, even if totally innocent, would not plead guilty to US charges and face 37 months in prison when the alternative is 35 years?

The treaty that allows US authorities to extradite British citizens – businessmen or alleged terrorists - without stating a case is heavy-handed. This is especially true for such economic crimes as price-fixing that would not have been illegal in Britain.

The lack of a reciprocal treaty to bring Americans to Britain is not the point: two wrongs do not make a right.

The NatWest Three may have a poor moral case but the case against their extradition is sound. If they can offset their year under house arrest against the sentence, then, after repaying their gains to the bank, they may feel they have got off lightly compared with the draconian alternative.

A law, however, that makes honest businessmen wary of doing business with America cannot be a good law. And a sentencing regime that makes accepting 37 months in jail rather than offer a defence is not justice.