ISRAEL's Income Tax Commission has denied a report that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of media magnate, Mr Rupert Murdoch, in connection with an investigation of tax fraud.

"This is completely untrue. No arrest warrant has been issued" a spokeswoman for the tax commission said yesterday. A lawyer for Mr Murdoch's News Datacom Research Ltd in Israel also denied an arrest warrant had been issued.

A spokesman for Mr Murdoch in New York, Mr Howard Rubinstein, declined to comment on the report and said he had "no information at all" about any charges.

The tax commission stressed that so far no arrests have been made in connection with the investigation. The London Sunday Business newspaper had said Israeli authorities may apply for the warrant to be executed in the United States, where Mr Murdoch has citizenship.

But the Israeli tax authority said in a statement that because no arrest warrant has been issued against Mr Murdoch ... "there is no intention to request his extradition from US authorities".

The statement said the document accompanying the article, which the newspaper said was a copy of the arrest warrant, was actually an order "to produce documents held by those law offices representing NDR in Israel in various transactions".

The order was granted in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court on October 17th, three days before the tax authority raided the offices of Mr Murdoch's Israeli subsidiary. "In this request the court was asked to order the lawyers to produce all relevant documents in their possession, including working papers connected to the suspects," the statement said.

NDR, which develops encryption systems for pay television, is the subject of an investigation by the Israeli tax authority on suspicions it concealed up to $150 million in income over several years.

"The persons whose names appear in the order are suspected of income tax evasion but that order has nothing whatsoever to do with a warrant for arrest of any of the persons mentioned," the tax commission's statement said.