Two years ago, I proposed a taxonomy of corruption, venality, and graft. I suggested this cumulative definition:

The withholding of a service, information, or goods that, by law, and by right, should have been provided or divulged. The provision of a service, information, or goods that, by law, and by right, should not have been provided or divulged. That withholding or provision of said service, information, or goods are in power of withholder or provider to withhold or to provide AND That withholding or provision of said service, information, or goods constitute an integral and substantial part of authority or function of withholder or provider. That service, information, or goods that are provided or divulged are provided or divulged against a benefit or promise of a benefit from recipient and as a result of receipt of this specific benefit or promise to receive such benefit. That service, information, or goods that are withheld are withheld because no benefit was provided or promised by recipient. There is also what World Bank calls "State Capture" defined thus:

"The actions of individuals, groups, or firms, both in public and private sectors, to influence formation of laws, regulations, decrees, and other government policies to their own advantage as a result of illicit and non-transparent provision of private benefits to public officials."

We can classify corrupt and venal behaviours according to their outcomes:

Income Supplement - Corrupt actions whose sole outcome is supplementing of income of provider without affecting "real world" in any manner. Acceleration or Facilitation Fees - Corrupt practices whose sole outcome is to accelerate or facilitate decision making, provision of goods and services or divulging of information. Decision Altering Fees - Bribes and promises of bribes which alter decisions or affect them, or which affect formation of policies, laws, regulations, or decrees beneficial to bribing entity or person. Information Altering Fees - Backhanders and bribes that subvert flow of true and complete information within a society or an economic unit (for instance, by selling professional diplomas, certificates, or permits). Reallocation Fees - Benefits paid (mainly to politicians and political decision makers) in order to affect allocation of economic resources and material wealth or rights thereto. Concessions, licenses, permits, assets privatized, tenders awarded are all subject to reallocation fees. To eradicate corruption, one must tackle both giver and taker.

History shows that all effective programs shared these common elements:

Narcissists are driven by need to uphold and maintain a false self - a concocted, grandiose, and demanding psychological construct typical of narcissistic personality disorder. The false self is projected to world in order to garner "narcissistic supply" - adulation, admiration, or even notoriety and infamy. Any kind of attention is usually deemed by narcissists to be preferable to obscurity.

The false self is suffused with fantasies of perfection, grandeur, brilliance, infallibility, immunity, significance, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. To be a narcissist is to be convinced of a great, inevitable personal destiny. The narcissist is preoccupied with ideal love, construction of brilliant, revolutionary scientific theories, composition or authoring or painting of greatest work of art, founding of a new school of thought, attainment of fabulous wealth, reshaping of a nation or a conglomerate, and so on. The narcissist never sets realistic goals to himself. He is forever preoccupied with fantasies of uniqueness, record breaking, or breathtaking achievements. His verbosity reflects this propensity.

Reality is, naturally, quite different and this gives rise to a "grandiosity gap". The demands of false self are never satisfied by narcissist's accomplishments, standing, wealth, clout, sexual prowess, or knowledge. The narcissist's grandiosity and sense of entitlement are equally incommensurate with his achievements.

To bridge grandiosity gap, malignant (pathological) narcissist resorts to shortcuts. These very often lead to fraud.

The narcissist cares only about appearances. What matters to him are facade of wealth and its attendant social status and narcissistic supply. Witness travestied extravagance of Tyco's Denis Kozlowski. Media attention only exacerbates narcissist's addiction and makes it incumbent on him to go to ever-wilder extremes to secure uninterrupted supply from this source.

The narcissist lacks empathy - ability to put himself in other people's shoes. He does not recognize boundaries - personal, corporate, or legal. Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments, extensions, objects unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his pursuit of narcissistic gratification.

This makes narcissist perniciously exploitative. He uses, abuses, devalues, and discards even his nearest and dearest in most chilling manner. The narcissist is utility- driven, obsessed with his overwhelming need to reduce his anxiety and regulate his labile sense of self-worth by securing a constant supply of his drug - attention. American executives acted without compunction when they raided their employees' pension funds - as did Robert Maxwell a generation earlier in Britain.

The narcissist is convinced of his superiority - cerebral or physical. To his mind, he is a Gulliver hamstrung by a horde of narrow-minded and envious Lilliputians. The dotcom "new economy" was infested with "visionaries" with a contemptuous attitude towards mundane: profits, business cycles, conservative economists, doubtful journalists, and cautious analysts.

Yet, deep inside, narcissist is painfully aware of his addiction to others - their attention, admiration, applause, and affirmation. He despises himself for being thus dependent. He hates people same way a drug addict hates his pusher. He wishes to "put them in their place", humiliate them, demonstrate to them how inadequate and imperfect they are in comparison to his regal self and how little he craves or needs them.