The corrupt official is not going to be straightforward. Think of a convoluted system where the official can put you behind tons of red tape (you might literally spend hours filling up nonsensical forms). But a small price to pay and -poof- all the red tape vanishes.

Reporting such (clearly) corrupt officials itself might involve paying bribes (think recursive) or might involve a court date months into the future which completely defeats the purpose. The justice system is itself part of the corruption problem.

This is what happens in a lot of third-world countries, India included. It would be impossible to get anything done business-wise in some countries that are heavy on bribes—without bribes, it would take forever to get licenses, building permits, and other government-mandated items for doing business, whereas a bribe would put you on the fast track.

> It would be impossible to get anything done business-wise ...

You'd be surprised how a background verification and other processing for a passport application can require four months without a bribe but less than a couple of weeks if the right hands are greased. I think corruption is a real problem if ordinary Joe cannot function without ending up bribing someone.

Indeed. In Brazil, we had (maybe still have) the following situation. Suppose your car had been stolen and the police had found it. They would then expect a bribe before handing you the car. If you didn't pay the bribe the car would suddenly "disappear". But you couldn't prove they had found your car and couldn't report it because corruption is so pervasive.

well, by making it so that paying bribes is legal, and being convicted of receiving a bribe results in having to pay it back, the briber is incentivized to entice officials and then to turn them in.

by simply making it so that you can turn them in there isn't really an incentive for the briber to go through the hassle of doing so.