MOSCOW, March 16 (Reuters) - Russian billionaire Oleg

Deripaska has said that Western investors should not be

pressured to sell their Russian assets, a practice he said was

dishonest, short-sighted and harmful to the Russian and global

economies.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many Western companies

have fled Russia and some of their holdings have been put under

state management, with allies of President Vladimir Putin

gaining day-to-day control.

Some Western investors who have remained in Russia say they

have come under pressure to sell up, being offered

bargain-basement prices and threatened with effective

expropriation.

"Pushing foreign companies to sell their Russian assets is

dishonest, short-sighted and extremely harmful to the economy -

not only the global economy, but also to Russia's," Deripaska

was quoted saying by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine,

remarks confirmed as accurate by a spokesman for Deripaska.

"It is important that the few Western investors who still

work in Russia remain owners of their enterprises and be able to

survive these difficult times."

In the wartime economy of Russia, some businessmen have

become billionaires by acquiring the prime assets of Western

companies at extremely discounted prices.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Deripaska himself has been

sanctioned by Britain for his alleged ties to Putin. He has

mounted a legal challenge against the sanctions which he says

are based on false information and ride roughshod over the basic

principles of law and justice.

Deripaska, who studied physics at Moscow University,

branched out into metals trading as the Soviet Union crumbled,

making a fortune by buying up stakes in aluminium factories.

Forbes ranked his fortune this year at $2.8 billion.

He founded Basic Element, an industrial group with interests

in mining, energy, property and agriculture, on the base of his

Siberian Aluminium which had gained control over some of the

jewels of the post-Soviet aluminium sector.

Deripaska in 2022 called for peace in Ukraine and casts the

war as a tragedy for both the Russian and Ukrainian people.

Deripaska has also been subjected to sanctions by the United

States, which in 2018 took measures against him and other

influential Russians because it said they were profiting from a

Russian state engaged in "malign activities" around the world.

The sanctions, an attempt to punish Moscow for alleged

meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, were "groundless, ridiculous

and absurd", Deripaska said at the time.