Shortly before that, protesters outside the luxury hotel he used as his home in Rome had humiliatingly pelted him with coins.As leader of Italy's Socialists from 1976 to 1993, Craxi was among the orchestrators of a system in which the main parties, and their officials, fed off bribes extorted from companies bidding for public contracts.
The foreign governments that had banned the Tigers as terrorists and from whose Tamil minorities some of the Tigers' funds had been extorted are glad to see them beaten.
Not so long ago, border guards extorted small but tiresome bribes from visitors.
They "cleansed" whole streets of Sunnis and summarily killed many of them; took over Sunni mosques; commandeered petrol stations to raise cash; and extorted protection money from businesses.
He devised a plan with his driver to abduct the boss; they extorted $51,000 from the company.
Mr Bulger extorted money from legitimate businessmen as well as crooks.
Like some seedy racketeer, the delinquents in Pyongyang had extorted a generous payment in exchange for talks about giving up their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
He has not denied the payments, but says the money was extorted.
The league was no longer a mutual protection pact; it was "the cities that the Athenians rule".The classical Athenians extorted money to craft what have become known as the Elgin marbles; now their descendants want the works returned to them.
Gangs, sometimes armed, have invaded scores of factories, abducting senior managers for "re-education sessions".On the pretext of settling labour disputes, they have extorted large sums of money.
"You have to change minds before you can change laws," she says.Such campaigns might be risky in countries where bribes are extorted at gunpoint.
