"Banking with the Persian Gulf has been increasingly popular with Russian entrepreneurs. They still face problems [when opening bank accounts] there, but challenges are not as great as in Turkey," Sergey Katyrin said.
Katyrin, who spoke on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum "Russia - Islamic World: KazanForum" in the Russian city of Kazan, said that financial exchanges between Russia and Turkey continued — but not without hitches.
"The system of financial transactions between Russian and Turkish businesses is more or less functional. The situation varies from sector to sector," he said.
Russian Ambassador to Turkey Aleksey Erkhov accused the West in April of piling pressure on Turkey to end financial exchanges with Russia. He said in February that US diplomats in Turkey were trying to force Turkish companies to stop doing business with Russia.