By SHARON CHURCHER

Last updated at 17:37 31 March 2008

The mother of the Russian-born British media magnate who vanished amid fears of a KGB plot last night tearfully claimed he was murdered as a result of his commitment to exposing levels of corruption in the government of Vladimir Putin.

Jet-setting billionaire financier and film producer Leonid Rozhetskin, 41, disappeared two weeks ago from his £1million holiday home just outside the Latvian capital Riga.

Traces of blood were found in the study and later in an abandoned Porsche 4x4 belonging to Mr Rozhetskin, one of the co-founders and major shareholders in British business newspaper City AM.

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Oligarch Leonid Rozhetskin and his wife Natalya had been together for six years when he disappeared

Days earlier, the tycoon had moved his wife Natalya Belova, a glamorous blonde former model, and three-year-old son into a £3million apartment in London which he intended to be the family's main home.

Yesterday, in an emotional interview with The Mail on Sunday, his mother Elvira revealed that he repeatedly warned her that his life was in danger.

Speaking in New York, where she has lived since emigrating from Russia, Mrs Rozhetskin said that at the time of his disappearance her son was trying to expose corruption.

Mrs Rozhetskin insists her son was a victim of Russian agents.

She said: "My son isn't missing. My son is dead and the reason he is dead is that he spoke out about corruption in the Russian government.

"There was so much blood (at the Latvian villa), too much blood for my son to have survived.

"Leonid was very scared. That is why he constantly travelled from place to place. He was a very rich man. A highly qualified lawyer. A very successful man.

"But he was also a very outspoken man. Leonid said he could never be safe in any country where Moscow had connections.

"He told me he was determined to expose the level of corruption in the Russian government. He said that corruption in the Russian government had cost hundreds and hundreds of millions.

"He was even making a movie about the Russian mafia. My son hated corruption and that is why he was killed. Robbery was not the motive. This was a professional hit by hired Russian agents."

The Latvian police say they have approached Scotland Yard for help because of its experience in investigating the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned dissident.

Litvinenko died from radiation poisoning in London in 2006 and his father has accused Putin of ordering his murder.

He also said the Russians tried to blacken his son's name with trumped-up charges.

In what might seem a similarity between the two cases, Moscow prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against Mr Rozhetskin several years ago.

This culminated in a warrant briefly being issued for his arrest for an alleged fraud.

"They said my son stole $40million," his mother recalled.

"He told me he was guilty of nothing."

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'So happy' Leonid Rozhetskin and Natalya in St Bart's in 2005

Following Mr Rozhetskin's disappearance in the early hours of March 16, stories in the Russian Press attempted to depict him as a closet homosexual.

One report claimed that before he went missing, the tycoon partied at a gay nightclub.

"My son gay? No, no," said Mrs Rozhetskin.

"That is a completely bogus smear. My son and Natasha were very happy," she added, referring to her daughter-in-law Natalya by her pet name.

"You only have to look at these photos," she adds, producing dozens of pictures of the couple.

The snaps include shots taken over Christmas 2005, when Natalya and Mr Rozhetskin flew in the oligarch's wood-panelled private jet to the Caribbean island of St. Bart's.

In some of the pictures, they cuddle their one-year-old son.

In others, Natalya, wearing a swimsuit designed by Domenico Dolce of Dolce & Gabbana – one of the couple's glamorous friends – snuggles against her husband.

"Natasha wasn't my first choice for my son," Mrs Rozhetskin said.

"He was 17 years older than her. But they have been together for six years and my son loved her very much.

"The last time I saw him, he seemed in a good mood, though maybe that was because he didn't want to scare me.

He had many homes [in Los Angeles, the South of France and Moscow] but he finally decided to settle down in England because he wanted his son to go to a good British private school and he had bought a three-bedroom home in London.

"My grandson moved in there three months ago. He had a nanny, a tutor teaching him English, and his aunt came over from St Petersburg to watch over him while Natalya closed up the flat in Moscow.

"She was due to meet my son at the new place in London on March 13. Leonid spent a couple of hours with me on Wednesday, March 12, before leaving to catch the plane to London.

"The nanny called and told me he and Natalya had both arrived. But then Leonid suddenly flew to Latvia.

"The only thing I can think is that someone warned him someone was trying to get to him in London and he was in great danger and he fled.

"He had security that was very, very tight at the villa. But somehow the killers got into the house."

Mr Rozhetskin was born in the Soviet Union in 1966. He emigrated to New York with his mother in 1980 after she left his father, Boris.

As a single mother, she struggled to make ends meet and the tiny flat where she now lives still looks oddly spartan for the mother of one of the world's richest men.

The living area is furnished with a table draped with a plastic cloth and a cheap settee.

The only luxury on display is an elegant fur-rimmed hat.

"I brought that with me from Russia," Elvira said.

"It was a very tough life, starting again in America, but I came here because I wanted more opportunities for Leonid."

The boy won scholarships to two of America's top universities, Columbia and Harvard, graduating in applied maths and law.

After the collapse of communism, he moved back to Russia, where he founded his venture capital firm, LV Finance.

But, like many oligarchs, he fell foul of the Putin regime and found himself accused of corruption.

In a complaint filed in September 2006 in the New York federal court, Mr Rozhetskin countered that the criminal charges against him were cooked up after he tried to thwart a plot by high-profile individuals to secretly take over MegaFon, a huge Russian mobile phone company.

Mr Rozhetskin, whose company owned 25 per cent of MegaFon, claimed that figures connected to MegaFon tried to intimidate him into transferring his shares

to an investment fund accumulating MegaFon shares.

"The message was clear: transfer ownership...or suffer the consequences of physical violence or incarceration, or both," he said in the complaint.

Mr Rozhetskin's writ and a follow-up were dismissed on technical grounds, but the judge granted Mr Rozhetskin leave to resubmit his claims, and last December he filed the amended complaint with the court.

It claimed that figures connected to MegaFon had summoned Mr Rozhetskin to a meeting in Moscow in 2001.

It was "demanded that Rozhetskin turn over the ...interest in MegaFon" and it claimed that "what can only be described as a death threat" was issued.

The complaint alleges that in 2002 in New York, a second threat was issued to Mr Rozhetskin.

He was told that he "should not think that his highly-placed friends would keep him safe" and reminded that "he would not be secure in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere unless he followed instructions".

While Latvian police continue their investigations, the tycoon's mother is convinced, however, that her son's worst fears have been realised.

During her final conversations with her son, he told her that he had written his will, asking that Natalya bring up his son in England if anything happened to him.

Mrs Rozhetskin said: "Now I am afraid for the rest of our family and there is nothing anyone can do to protect us. You can only hide for so long."