On Friday, billionaire investor and Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak said the US dollar is too powerful due to its reserve currency status, and the world is in desperate need of an alternative.

In a speech at the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence 2023, he called the dollar, “the biggest financial terrorist in the world.” He went on to explain, that because most dollars are kept in US banks, in so-called nostro accounts, their usage, and ownership is entirely at the whim of decisions made by American banks and authorities.

He added, “Somebody in the US can say: You cannot withdraw [this money] from tomorrow morning – and you are stuck. That is the power of the reserve currency.”

He added that due to fears which have been exacerbated recently by the sanctions levied against Russia over the war in Ukraine, the world is now “desperately looking for an alternative reserve currency.” He went on to suggest that India should attempt to step into the void and take measures to make its own currency, the rupee, the world’s reserve currency.

He went on, “It is our time for making a shot at it, which will take us probably 10 years.” He said that if India was to achieve this, is would need to build strong financial institutions and a strong financial framework, “that is not dependent on the whims and fancies of anyone,” so that it can gain the trust of other global partners. Kotak added that at present, he does not see any other strong contenders for the status of reserve currency

He said, “I don’t think Europe can [make their currency the reserve], because its states are disunited. I don’t think the UK or Japan have the heft to be taking that position, though both the British pound and the yen are free currencies. China, I think, has a major issue of trust with many countries around the world.

Kotak expanded on his comments in a tweet Saturday, saying that he was referring to the excessive power a reserve currency has. He noted that such a status gives the currency the power to control global transactions, leading to the risk that countries will become dependent on it and then become subject to political pressures.

He wrote, “In a recent discussion on [the] US dollar I inadvertently used [the] words ‘financial terrorist’ which I would like to correct. What I meant was that a reserve currency has disproportionate power, whether it is nostro account, 500 basis points rate increase, or emerging countries holding dollars for liquidity.”