(Reuters) - Russian aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska on Monday bemoaned a "primitive" Russian finance system dominated by state banks, saying it was sliding into the past while other countries took advantage of a realignment in global finance.
The billionaire founder of aluminium giant Rusal is one of the few Russian business leaders to have criticised the management of the economy at a time when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has sent Western investors fleeing and triggered a host of international economic sanctions on Russia.
Those sanctions have pushed Russia to do more business with China in particular, and even hold reserves in yuan rather than dollars, helping to erode the primacy of the U.S. currency.
Deripaska said many countries were working to take advantage of a developing a multi-currency financial order for their own benefit.
"Everyone - apart from us," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
"With our financial system of bondage and usury based on state banks, with our most primitive understanding of the role of debt, credit, capital in the economy, we are sliding further and further into the past."
While political criticism of the Kremlin is strictly off-limits in Russia, some business leaders have been allowed to address the shortcomings of the economy as Moscow tries to maintain broad standards of living despite the human and financial cost of the invasion.
Last month, Deripaska - himself under sanctions from the United States, Britain and the European Union - urged the government to stop interfering in business. And in June, he suggested that the invasion of Ukraine would reverse decades of Russian economic progress.