What if there were a country where all major media were owned privately by organized crime, and those same gangsters were able to fool everyone into a government that looks ideal (like a republic) and that their voice matters and their vote counts, but in reality the gangsters always take charge of collating and counting the ballots, and everyone elected were nothing more than powerless figureheads. Now these same gangsters became enormously rich and were able to finance wars, and eventually they got people so used to using paper money and that counterfeiting was so severely punished that everyone intrinsicly trusted this paper to be real, and people would sign promises to work decades to pay off loans based on this paper, and would accept it for their labor to pay the loans and to send a yearly tribute to the protection racket they think is their republic.

What, exactly, would such a country look like?