From Wikipedia (section to discuss underlined and bolded):
Though the Company was becoming increasingly bold and ambitious in putting down resisting states, it was getting clearer that the Company was incapable of governing the vast expanse of the captured territories. The Bengal famine of 1770, in which one-third of the local population died, caused distress in Britain. Military and administrative costs mounted beyond control in British-administered regions in Bengal due to the ensuing drop in labour productivity. At the same time, there was commercial stagnation and trade depression throughout Europe. The directors of the company attempted to avert bankruptcy by appealing to Parliament for financial help. This led to the passing of the Tea Act in 1773, which gave the Company greater autonomy in running its trade in America, and allowed it an exemption from the tea tax which its colonial competitors were required to pay. When the American colonists, who included tea merchants, were told of the act, they tried to boycott it, claiming that, although the price had gone down on the tea when enforcing the act, it was a tax all the same, and the king should not have the right to just have a tax for no apparent reason. The arrival of tax-exempt Company tea, undercutting the local merchants, triggered the Boston Tea Party in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution.
–East India Company, Wikipedia
The Boston Tea Party was the American colonists’ response to corporatism and the injustice of special favours for a specific corporate entity. The section mentioned above is headed "Financial troubles". So clearly the East India Company turned to influence peddling to get special treatment and ward off its own demise. That is how wealth is often acquired.
Isn’t this what’s happening now? And isn’t this the opposite of the narrative Marc Faber was spinning? Have a go at the full Wikipedia entry. It makes for good reading.