What's the motive of corruption?

What's the motive of corruption?

The way I see it, your article Corruption as role distortion
by Ignas Kleden (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 6, 2001) somehow
mitigates corruption and put the blame on role performance rather
than on the individual himself. The corruptor is a person who is
led into temptation, and, as Oscar Wilde says, the best way to
overcome temptation is to yield to it.

As an Indonesian citizen I have "seen" corruption under four
governments (Sukarno's, Soeharto's, Habibie's and the present
regime's). As a layman in the matter of corruption from a
sociological point of view, I can only see that it all boils down
to two causes, the need to make ends meet and greed. Lower-level
government employees turn to corruption because their salary is
not sufficient to maintain them through the whole month. This may
be understandable, but when one comes to greed, this is something
innate.

Can one understand why a high-level government functionary
corrupts hundreds of millions, or even billions of rupiah? Why
can't he or she be satisfied with just some tens of millions of
rupiah? This mental attitude is very hard to eradicate. It cannot
be solved by denying the middleman role of government employees,
because the whole corrupt generation has to die out and be
replaced with new people (who hopefully have not inherited or who
have not been contaminated by corruption) to lead the country.

RUDI WILSON

Bandung