The missing multi-millionaire: A cut-throat mystery for the new Cold War
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Leonid Rozhetskin
Independent.co.uk
All that was left behind was a pool of blood when Leonid Rozhetskin disappeared two months ago. Investigators are still no closer to working out what happened. What has become of the Russian tycoon with a thirst for danger?
By Martin Tomkinson in Riga and Cole Moreton in London
Sunday, 11 May 2008
There was blood on the carpet. Lots of it. The room was in disarray, but nobody had seen a fight. The villa was secluded in its own private pine wood, yards from a beautiful white beach on the coast of Latvia. The owner was gone.
Leonid Rozhetskin - a super-rich Russian-American lawyer with a taste for danger and connections in the highest places - disappeared exactly two months ago. The 41-year-old was beginning to finance movies, trying to break into Hollywood. Now he is starring - in his absence - in a real thriller, still unfolding at locations across the world.
It began on 16 March, when his holiday villa on the Gulf of Riga was found empty. His car was discovered abandoned the next day. His private jet had left Latvia without him, and has since hopped mysteriously from airport to airport for no apparent reason.
Exactly two months later, FBI agents are trying to unravel fiction from fact as they follow the hugely complicated trail of businesses, associates and lovers he left behind. Where did Rozhetskin go? Did he choose to vanish? Was he murdered? If so, who did it? Was it a crime of passion? Did the Russian mafia take revenge for a deal? Has another critic of Putin's regime been silenced?
--MORE--
Leonid Rozhetskin
Independent.co.uk
All that was left behind was a pool of blood when Leonid Rozhetskin disappeared two months ago. Investigators are still no closer to working out what happened. What has become of the Russian tycoon with a thirst for danger?
By Martin Tomkinson in Riga and Cole Moreton in London
Sunday, 11 May 2008
There was blood on the carpet. Lots of it. The room was in disarray, but nobody had seen a fight. The villa was secluded in its own private pine wood, yards from a beautiful white beach on the coast of Latvia. The owner was gone.
Leonid Rozhetskin - a super-rich Russian-American lawyer with a taste for danger and connections in the highest places - disappeared exactly two months ago. The 41-year-old was beginning to finance movies, trying to break into Hollywood. Now he is starring - in his absence - in a real thriller, still unfolding at locations across the world.
It began on 16 March, when his holiday villa on the Gulf of Riga was found empty. His car was discovered abandoned the next day. His private jet had left Latvia without him, and has since hopped mysteriously from airport to airport for no apparent reason.
Exactly two months later, FBI agents are trying to unravel fiction from fact as they follow the hugely complicated trail of businesses, associates and lovers he left behind. Where did Rozhetskin go? Did he choose to vanish? Was he murdered? If so, who did it? Was it a crime of passion? Did the Russian mafia take revenge for a deal? Has another critic of Putin's regime been silenced?
--MORE--