A Russian corruption journalist has died in what local police say has been drunken fall, while his colleagues believe it to be a revenge attack.

Yaroslav Vyacheslav, an independent reporter for Koruptsiya i Kriminal (Corruption and Crime), a newspaper published in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don died Monday of a severe head injury sustained April 30.

The local police say Yaroshenko hit his head on the stairs while he was drunk but colleagues are sure he was attacked.

"I have no doubt that the attack was connected to Yaroshenko's writing and is payback for his journalistic work," Sergey Sleptsov, one of Yaroshenko's colleagues and close friends told the Associated Press.

This is while police say there was no evidence of foul play.

"The authorities have already conducted a thorough investigation of all evidence of the crime and did not find any precedent for opening a new investigation," said Col. Aleksei Polyaski, a local police spokesman.

After Iraq and Algeria, Russia is considered as the third-most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Nearly 50 journalists have been killed in the country since the Soviet breakup.

MVZ/AKM