— A Russian diplomat was found dead last month outside the country"s embassy in the German capital, BBC reported quoting German media. The man"s body was discovered on the pavement on October 19 by police guarding the Berlin compound, Der Spiegel website reported. The Russian embassy in Berlin has said that an employee died there last month in a "tragic accident". The man had apparently fallen from an upper floor, but it was unclear how, Der Spiegel said. Germany"s foreign ministry confirmed the diplomat"s death to reporters but would not give further details. Police in Berlin have not publicly commented on the death, which was reported for the first time on Friday. Der Spiegel said the embassy called it a "tragic accident" on which it would not comment "for ethical reasons". In a post on Facebook, the Russian embassy stated that an "accident" had occurred on October 19. "We confirm that a tragic accident involving an employee of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Germany happened on October 19, 2021. All the procedures related to repatriating the diplomat’s body back to the homeland were promptly settled with responsible German law-enforcement and medical authorities in accordance with current practices," the embassy said. "We consider speculations which have appeared in a number of Western media in the light of this tragic event to be absolutely incorrect." According to an official diplomatic list, the man has been accredited as a second embassy secretary in Berlin since summer 2019. "The case is known to the foreign ministry," a German diplomatic spokesman told a regular news conference on Friday. Der Spiegel also reported that the German intelligence service believed the man was a secret member of the Russian domestic intelligence service (FSB), responsible for fighting terrorism. The man has not been officially named, but reports say he was 35 years old. Investigative website Bellingcat said it had used open source data to establish the man was the son of the deputy director of the Second Service of Russia"s FSB intelligence agency. It has previously linked the Second Service to the murder of Georgian national and former Chechen rebel commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was shot in the head in a Berlin park in August 2019. Germany has accused Russia of ordering that murder. Second Service officials have also been linked to the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in 2020. According to Der Spiegel, the Russian embassy did not agree to a post-mortem examination following the diplomat"s death last month, and his body has now been returned to Russia. — Agencies