"Lubrication payments are not subject to a going rate. They are usually determined by what the traffic will bear. The usual way for a government official to extract a payment is by threatening obstruction or delay in carrying out his official duties… Large political payments are rarely transferred directly by a principal to an upper echelon official; rather, a middleman is used. He may be a professional ‘fixer’ who is himself a low-level government functionary; more often he will be a member of the same family as the high-level recipient."