Italy’s financial police have seized assets worth about €20 million in an investigation into financial fraud allegedly targeting Swiss actor Ursula Andress.
Property, artworks and financial assets in and around Florence were allegedly purchased with money stolen from the original Bond girl by financial advisers.
The funds stolen from Andress (90), famous for her role in the first James Bond movie, Dr No, were allegedly invested in foreign companies, used to buy assets and then channelled through transactions designed to conceal their source.
Prosecutors in the Swiss canton of Vaud built a picture of a “systematic misappropriation of financial resources” worth about 18 million Swiss francs carried out through multiple transactions, said Italy’s financial crimes police in a Thursday statement.
They were traced to the purchase of 11 real estate properties, 14 plots of land cultivated as vineyards and olive groves, along with artworks and financial assets in Florence and the neighbouring Tuscan countryside.
“The judge for preliminary investigations of the court of Florence, fully endorsing the prosecution’s position, ordered the seizure of the entire illicit profit, up to the amount of CHF18,000,000, to be enforced against the identified assets,” the statement added.
No suspects were identified in the statement.
Andress told Swiss newspaper Blick in January that she had been defrauded out of 18 million Swiss francs by her long-time financial adviser over an eight-year period. The newspaper said the adviser had died in the meantime.
“I am still in shock,” Andress was quoted as saying. “I was deliberately chosen as a victim. For eight years, I was courted and wooed. They lied to me shamelessly and exploited my goodwill in a perfidious, indeed criminal, way in order to take everything from me. They took advantage of my age.”
Swiss-born Andress is best known as the first Bond girl, Honey Ryder, which featured her memorable entrance emerging from the sea in a white bikini.
She went on to work with Elvis Presley in Fun In Acapulco and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in Four For Texas. She later shifted to a European cinema and television career, before retiring in the early 2000s.
The assets are believed to be the proceeds of money laundering and self-laundering crimes committed against the actor, said the Guardia di Finanza police on Thursday.
They include a luxury country estate in San Casciano in Val di Pesa, on the outskirts of Florence, with vineyards and olive groves, as well as art pieces and other financial assets.
Andress had filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland, claiming she had been a victim of fraud by people who managed her finances through a series of “highly opaque” transactions, the Guardia di Finanza said.
The investigations in Italy and Switzerland identified “significant connections” between some of these transactions and Italy, particularly the Florence area, prompting Italian authorities to intervene, the statement added. – AP
