Dark? That's just business as usual in a large chunk of the world, across every industry. Ask any company with a large, multi-continent presence and you'll get stories for days about this kind of stuff.

Can the dictator turn off the power? Turn off the phones? Turn off the internet? Close the ports of entry? Hold food hostage? Hold your shipment hostage? Stop fuel imports, production, and distribution? Nationalize anything and potentially everything? Run off or genocide entire ethnic groups? Yeah. And it happens often enough that examples are easily found of most of these (note: turning off power and stopping fuel imports are possible, but would simply piss people off, so it's usually bad politics).

Not sure what's dark about how the world works. Doesn't make it right or just, but that doesn't mean it can't be how things are.