Police in Papua New Guinea have foiled an attempt to murder senior tax officials.
The Post Courier newspaper says what it describes as an assassination plot by two Asians was revealed in a statement from the Commissioner-General of Internal Revenue.
The statement says the murder bid was linked to official moves to clamp down on horserace gaming machines.
The commissioner general, David Sode, said the purported reasons for what he described as 'terminating' tax officers was that the commission might put them out of their illegal business in PNG.
A parliamentary committee has heard that the internal revenue commission was missing out on tax revenue of about 15 million US dollars a year while operators made 50 US dollars' profit a day from a machine.
