Revealed: Oligarch bought false passport before disappearing

The 41-year-old Russian-born American citizen, one of the founders of London-based business newspaper City AM, bought a black market passport in the fake Latvian name Leonards Rozets. He could have paid up to £20,000 for it.

The passport contained a bogus personal code number denoting him as a Latvian citizen.

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Torn apart: Tycoon Leonid Rozhetskin is missing, his wife Natalya is in hiding

While Mr Rozhetskin's family believe he has been murdered in a contract killing ordered from Moscow, the police are not ruling out the possibility that he was kidnapped – or faked his own killing in order to avoid a bitter conflict with business rivals over his multi-million-pound fortune.

Mr Rozhetskin's US passport has been found but the illegal Latvian document is missing.

Details of the passport have been uncovered during an investigation by Latvian TV3 programme Nothing Personal.

The passport has been identified by the Latvian Interior Ministry as one of 150 identity documents recently bought on the black market by foreigners, mainly Russians.

They were provided by corrupt officials working with a criminal gang in exchange for payments of between £200 and £20,000.

Police are currently holding Rozhetskin's housekeeper Anatoliy Ivanovich Demchenkov, who looked after the £1million mansion in the Latvian seaside resort of Jurmala from where the businessman vanished on March 16.

Mr Demchenkov is accused of aiding and abetting his boss's disappearance and possible murder, or hiding the perpetrator and his accomplices or the weapons used for the crime.

He can be held for up to two months for questioning.

Police sources in Riga say they cannot confirm speculation that Mr Demchenkov was linked to either the Soviet-era KGB or modern-day Russian intelligence.

One claim is that he worked for an institute in Riga with close ties to the feared Lubyanka headquarters of the USSR's secret police.

Latvian police chief Aldis Lieljukis said: "We can't rule out Russia as a country where the investigation may lead."

Mr Rozhetskin's mother Elvira, who lives in New York but who spent summers at Jurmala, said of Mr Demchenkov: "He's been working there a long time. Leonid didn't visit Jurmala often, but they kept in touch by phone.

"This man was guarding the house.

"Anatoliy is around 50, I think. I trusted him." Police have refused to name a second man arrested last week in connection with the investigation.

He, too, is understood to have been employed by Mr Rozhetskin in some way but he was released within hours.

Meanwhile, Mr Rozhetskin's family hit out yesterday at what they see as the slow speed of the police probe and the lack of information.

His mother said that though four weeks had elapsed since Mr Rozhetskin went missing, she had not yet been contacted by police, nor had they sought to obtain DNA samples from relatives to match with blood found at the crime scene.

Nor, it is understood, have officers made contact with the tycoon's wife Natalya, who is in hiding in London with their young son.

Mr Rozhetskin's mother said: "I don't know anything about the case. Nobody calls me to tell the news.

"I learn everything from the papers. The Latvian police have not contacted me."

She added: "If the police need us for DNA, they know where to find us. But they have not tried to."