Gregory David Roberts Quotes
The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business.
Roberts, Gregory David. Shantaram. St. Martin's Press, 2004.
The Kimberly and Comstock lodes were natural deposits of copper and silver so close to the surface that it required very little work to remove the metal and sell the it.
The “rebate agony” referred to a corrupt practice of the Railroads and the Large Monopolies. The railroads charged a very high rate for the transportation of important products like beef and oil. However, secretly they gave back a large percentage of the transportation rate charged to the trusts. They in turn could cut their prices and undersell all the smaller competitors who were paying “full freight” and could not afford to match the lower price. As soon as the smaller competitors were driven out of business in an area, the trust raised its rates even higher than they charged originally. The Railroad had made a small but reasonable profit on the freight of the trusts but they were guaranteed all their business. They also made huge profits on the higher rates that the small companies paid until those companies were driven out of business. Journalists like Ray Baker and Ida Tarbell had uncovered the rebate scheme which enabled the trusts to steal high amounts from the general public through unreasonably high prices. President Theodore Roosevelt was committed to try and regulate the railroads and not allow rebates but charge the same public rate to all with no rebates. Socialists like Sinclair, thought that this attempt would be hopeless—that the damage had already been done, and the trusts now had so much money that they could buy state legislatures and many in Congress to preserve their dominance.
In 2014 he was accused of money laundering and placed under house arrest by the Russian Government. This typically was the first step in seizing some or all of his assets. When that is done, typically there are local and national politicians who will benefit as they will be able to “buy” the assets from the government at pennies on the dollar.
Gregory David Roberts is an Australian author best known for his novel Shantaram. He is a former heroin addict and convicted bank robber who escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980 and fled to India, where he lived for ten years.
