HIGH-PROFILE TOURIST

Russian missing

Foul play feared as telecom billionaire disappears en route to Phuket

A Russian billionaire who was on his way to Phuket for a holiday in the sun has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. There are fears that Leonid Rozhetskin, a 41-year-old US-educated lawyer who became a telecommunications baron, may have met "mob-related" foul play.

Rozhetskin was reported missing 12 days ago, and press reports in Europe said "blood matching his DNA has since been found on the floor" of his home in Latvia. The Russian's plane was also missing.

The Defamer website said Rozhetskin had recently teamed up with Eric Eisner, son of former Disney Chief Michael Eisner, to produce movies. In February, they sold the comedy "Hamlet 2" for US$10 million (Bt320 million) at the Sundance film festival. "Eric appears to have lost his film-producing partner," it said.

"Rozhetskin had sworn enemies all over the former Soviet bloc, where he was named in 2006 as part of an international money-laundering scheme aimed at Russian telecoms. "He had long been an outsider [and US citizen] fiercely critical of Russian ex-president Vladimir Putin's regime, which kept him a target in exile but not necessarily out of the public eye (if his Flickr photo-sharing site is any indication).

"He left a meandering network of personal blogs and a MySpace page last updated on March 19 in his wake as well, with most devoted to the trajectory of his partnership with Eric Eisner in L+E Productions, which struck gold two months ago at Sundance when Focus Features bought its first offering, the Steve Coogan and Catherine Keener comedy 'Hamlet 2', for a festival-high $10 million."

Rozhetskin was en route to Phuket when he went missing. His wife and son "are under watch in London", the website said. "Our best wishes are with them and Eisner, but the odds here are more than a little sobering."

- Daily Xpress / 4-6-08

Leonid Rozhetskin

On:

http://leonidrozhetskin.net/

there are 40 web-links to his profiles, blogs, and entries on a vast array of his Internet entries, such as Flickr, Hi5, MySpace, etc.