London/HongKong  - Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has spent more than 5 million US dollars on a luxury Hong Kong hideaway, a news report said Sunday.

The three-storey home at the JC Castle development in Hong Kong's Tai Po district was bought in June last year by a middle-man acting on behalf of Mugabe and his wife, the Sunday Times in London reported.

The newspaper speculated that the property may have been bought as a Far East "bolt-hole" for the dictator whose 30-year stranglehold power appears to be finally ending as his country sinks into economic and political chaos.

The house, in a gated compound with a clubhouse and swimming pool, was reportedly bought through a middle man using a shelf company, but the newspaper quoted sources in Zimbabwe saying Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace hold a controlling interest in the property.

Any secrecy surrounding Mugabe's reported purchase evaporated Friday when two Hong Kong-based photographers working for the Sunday Times called police to complain they were assaulted by a man and woman apparently looking after the property.

The confrontation took place just three weeks after a high-profile incident in which another photographer, Sinopix chief photographer Richard Jones, complained of being punched repeatedly by Grace Mugabe while she was out shopping in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Photographers Colin Galloway, 46, claims he was gripped by the throat and lifted off his feet by an African man in his 30s while his colleague Tim O'Rourke, 45, says he too was assaulted.

Police were called and the two photographers and the alleged assailants were taken to a police station to give statements. No one was arrested.

Lawyer Michael Vidler, acting on behalf of the two photographers, said Sunday: "It was a straightforward assault case. Why on earth weren't they (the alleged assailants) arrested?"

Mugabe, who turns 85 this week and is banned along with members of his regime and their families from travelling to EU countries and the US, was in Hong Kong last summer as his daughter Bona prepared to begin her university studies.

African students have staged protests and petitioned the Chinese embassy in Harare calling for Bona Mugabe to be deported back to Zimbabwe and made to study in her home country's struggling university system.

A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong police said inquiries into the alleged assault were continuing. She declined to say whether any of the alleged assailants had attempted to claim diplomatic immunity.

A police investigation into the alleged assault by Grace Mugabe on photographer Richard Jones in January is continuing and no arrests have been made. dpa