Ivan Safronov, a correspondent for Russian business daily who died recently in what is seen as a suicide, had been investigating a prepared deal to supply Russian weapons to Syria and Iran and received threats from Russian state security service, the Kommersant daily reported on Monday.

Safronov died on March 2 after tumbling five floors from the stairwell of his Moscow apartment building. The daily quoted the press service of the prosecutor’s office that is working with the suicide case as saying that investigators do not rule out that the reported could have been driven to suicide.

The daily also said that before a trip to the international weapons fair in United Arab Emirates Safronov told his colleagues that he was going to check the information about new deals to supply Russian weapons to the Middle East — the sale of the Su-30 jets to Syria and S-300V surface-to-air missiles to Iran.

The reporter said that in both cases the weapons were to be supplied via Belarus to protect Russia from Western accusations of supporting rogue states.

He added that he was not going to write about these facts immediately because he had received warnings from the Russian security service, the FSB, that the international scandal would lead to his arrest and trial over disclosure of state secrets.

Kommersant wrote that two criminal cases had been instigated against Safronov and he had been repeatedly questioned by authorities, who accused him of divulging state secrets. However, each time the reporter managed to prove that his sources were legitimate.

The reporter’s colleagues and relatives have described him as a strong, cheerful person who would be extremely unlikely to kill himself.

A recent count by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists found that 13 Russian journalists have been murdered in contract-style killings since last year.

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