This reminds me of the Transnationals described in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red-Green-Blue Mars trilogy (which won an award for its realistic portrayal of economi

This reminds me of the Transnationals described in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red-Green-Blue Mars trilogy (which won an award for its realistic portrayal of economics). Basically, the multinationals found small countries with a GDP much smaller than their own profits and bought the whole country: land, infrastructure, and government. Then they refashioned the laws of that country through corruption and bribery to fit themselves and began operating at a level parallel to the governments of other countries, rather than being subject to their laws. In this case, the governments of Saudi Arabia, China, etc., worried that the countries that supply them with raw materials will pass laws restricting exports, are buying massive portions of the production capacity of these exporting countries to essentially make it impossible for these countries to sell goods to anybody else. It's simultaneously a clever and sinister form of neo-colonialism.