BAE set for rough time in the arms of Justice

The sudden detention of BAE Systems boss Mike Turner and non-executive director Sir Nigel Rudd by US authorities probing bribery allegations is an alarming development for every British business with interests in America. It's also a scary sign of just how powerful the US Department of Justice has become post-Enron.

Turner and Rudd arrived separately in America last week to be greeted by officials from the DoJ who led them into small rooms, searched their laptops and BlackBerrys and interrogated them about supposed corruption on £80 billion of Saudi Arabian arms deals.

It's not clear how the DoJ knew the pair were arriving. Rudd wasn't on BAE business, and even directors of arms manufacturers are allowed to travel without being watched by the US government.

In Britain we are impressed with the DoJ's success at securing fraud convictions against major businessmen, usually comparing it to the Serious Fraud Office's much less aggressive approach.

In the UK, it's hard to get a major fraud conviction, but perhaps it should be. The American approach seems to start from a presumption of guilt and work backwards. While the DoJ is investigating, anything remotely embarrassing that emerges during the inquiry gets listed in lawsuits or leaked to the press.

There's no way the laptops would have contained revelations relating to the case; let's assume that, if Turner and Rudd were crooks, and there's no evidence they are, they aren't stupid ones. The point of this invasion was to act threatening and create insecurity.

If the US DoJ decides it is going to get you, there is nowhere you can hide, as the NatWest Three discovered. When a case gets to court, the DoJ will put up a hundred charges - some of them wildly inflated - in the knowledge that a jury is bound to conclude the government wouldn't be making such a fuss if the accused hadn't done something very wrong. The department boasts a success rate of more than 90% - even dictators don't claim that many votes.

For other BAE staff lower down the chain, a trip to America now looks like a risk not worth taking.

Hard but not fair: the US Spirit of Liberty turned nasty on Mike Turner of BAE

In other high-profile US fraud cases, minions who just happened to be in the room when skulduggery supposedly occurred found themselves under intense pressure. They were subpoenaed by the DoJ and greeted with a talk that goes something like this: 'Your career is over. But if you tell us incriminating things about your bosses that coincide with our version of events, we'll keep you out of prison. Sign here.'

If the DoJ can so casually interrogate people as powerful as Turner and Rudd, imagine what they could do to the rest of us.

Those lawyers in the Justice Department are an extraordinary breed, far removed from government solicitors in the UK who are doing public service because a) they had no choice or b) they prefer the hours.

These guys do a few years crushing whatever comes into their path, before they either join Wall Street or run for election. A string of top fraud convictions against big business people is almost a required part of the CV for lawyers-turned-politicians, a nod to the public that they are on their side.

To say that the NatWest Three deserved what they got, or that BAE remains worthy of further pursuit misses the point. You can't have fair trials only for people who are innocent, in the same way that you can't have free speech only for people you agree with.

Justice? Nothing like it.

Urban Outfitters is a triumph of marketing - a hugely successful business that has disguised the gap between what it is and what its customers suppose it to be.

Walk into the store on Kensington High Street and be convinced you have entered a world run by a new breed of hippies - cooler and more sarcastic than the originals, and with better dress sense.

The staff look like students because many of them are, and everything in the shop blares detachment - a major attraction to twentysomethings who just can't resist an ironic T-shirt and thirtysomethings still trying to pull off the old look. The stores have already conquered New York and London. Ireland is next.

Quiet man: To expand, Richard Hayne needs to stay in the background

It seems unlikely that many of the staff or the customers know much about the owner and boss of Urban - a brilliant retailer called Richard Hayne whose views would be a serious risk to sales were his profile to rise.

Hayne started the business in the 1970s, taking it public in 1993 and bringing it to Britain in 1998. He is still the biggest shareholder and a seriously rich man - a billionaire by some estimates. You only have to look to see that there is nothing remotely hip about him. There is surely a bigger gulf between Hayne and his customer base than any other High Street retailer.

Shopping in Urban makes you feel like you are somewhere radically Left-wing, an antidote to the corporate blandness of The Gap. But Hayne is a stanch conservative who donates money to Republican politicians, not least Rick Santorum, a now failed Senator whose views on homosexuality are both bizarre and old-fashioned.

Hayne doesn't give many interviews precisely because he's afraid that college slackers who get to know him will suddenly realise that buying his clothes is like giving cash to George Bush.

Once described as projecting a "Dick Cheney-esque aura of no-nonsense grayflannel gravitas", Hayne must be the only retailer whose expansion plans depend on no one finding out who he really is.

Despite the strife in the sector, Urban just beat Wall Street profit expectations yet again. So far, the illusion is holding up perfectly.

Let's make tax a status symbol to brag about

The other week Italian authorities posted on the internet the 2005 tax returns of all 40 million of the country's taxpayers. Before howls of complaint led to the site being shut down, some interesting information was gleaned.

For one, it was disclosed that Giorgio Armani then paid a handsome €19m (£15m at today's prices) on income of €44m - healthy figures that show the fashion designer at least pulling his weight. How many top earners in the UK could boast similar ratios?

Personal income is a sensitive subject (painfully so), but in the public interest the government could surely justify disclosing who are, say, the top, 200 individual taxpayers.

Maybe it could herald a new approach to taxpaying by the very rich, who mostly prefer to hire good accountants and then write cheques to charity when it suits them.

Rather than disappearing off into tax havens and bragging to each other about how little they hand-over to the government, tycoons would battle to be that year's top taxpayer.

Sir Philip Green, competitive type that he is, would want to ensure he was higher in the list than the other knights of retail, Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco and Sir Stuart Rose of M&S.

Instead of comparing wives and cars, investment bankers would show off by boasting, 'Did you see the size of my tax return?'

Okay, I'm hallucinating.