Bribery or Extortion

Recently, there has been escalating effort from Indonesian Anti-Corruption Committee to crack down high profile corruption cases in Indonesia involving the riches and high profile politician or political parties. High profile businessman across the country has been detained like Mrs. Siti Hartati Murdaya who are the chief of Indonesian Buddhist Association and  owned the Murdaya group plantation mainly focussing in Palm plantation and Palm Oil Mill.

Those recent cases has been reported intensively in many media; television, newspaper, news web and radio. This made me think about it. When people give money/presents to bureaucrat, is it a bribery, extortion or just a pure gift. I think we need to carefully differentiate the difference between each category.

In my opinion, bribery happens when a person give money to a recipient so that the recipient are willing to make everything easy like lower the standard to get certificate, higher the person result, and etc for the person who give them money even  though it breaks the laws. Extortion happens when a person was forced whether directly or indirectly to give money to a recipient so that the person wouldn't be given more trouble.

Bribery:
- The person act as the initiator
- The person realized that he can not passed an application
- The person required restrictions to be ease
- The recipient did not expect
- The recipient have the power to change the restriction
- The recipient after receiving benefits from the person are willing to change the restriction

Extortion:
- The person didn't feel he has to change restriction
- The person believe his application has met the required standard
- The person was forced to give certain amount of benefits to the recipient so that its application can be accepted
- The recipient act as initiator
- The recipient has the power to increase the restriction on the application
- The recipient after receiving benefits from the person didn't increase/change the restriction

Well that's what i thought... Probably i need more indepth thought to improve this differentiation.

Disclaimer : This is purely an opinion from me. It might not been verified or accepted.
Thank you.