The other side of this is that higher wages increasingly attract people fixated solely on personal wealth accumulation, who themselves are hardly immune to bribery. Are these the personalities we need in positions of power?

In first world countries, wages do not influence susceptibility to bribery.

In high-income countries, petty corruption is less common because wages are above subsistence level. Corruption in these countries, if present, involves more secret deals, brings about larger payoffs, and is more difficult to detect. Government wages will arguably be less effective to combat the latter form of corruption.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/higher-government-wages-may-reduce-corruption