Producing Partner Of Michael Eisner's Son Is AWOL, Feared Killed by Russian Mafia
Coming off a $10 million sale of his comedy Hamlet 2 at Sundance, Michael Eisner's son Eric appears to have lost his film-producing partner to mob-related foul play. Page Six reports today that Leonid Rozhetskin, a 41-year-old Russian-born, US-educated lawyer-turned-billionaire telecommunications baron, was reported missing 10 days ago and that "[b]lood matching his DNA has since been found on the floor" of his home in Latvia. His plane is also AWOL.
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 stream is any indication). He left a meandering network of personal blogs and a MySpace page last updated 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/Catherine Keener comedy Hamlet 2, for a festival-high $10 million.
The Post mentions Rozhetskin was en route to Phuket, Thailand when he went missing; his wife and son are under watch in London. Our best wishes are with them and Eisner, but the odds here are more than a little sobering.
