Italian authorities have seized €20 million (£17.3 million) in assets in Tuscany, including property, vineyards, and olive groves, allegedly purchased with money embezzled from actor Ursula Andress.
Andress, 90, filed a complaint in her native Switzerland alleging a “progressive and significant depletion of her assets” by individuals managing her finances, Italy’s financial crimes police said in a statement on Thursday.
Prosecutors in the Swiss canton of Vaud uncovered a “systematic misappropriation of financial resources” worth about 18 million Swiss francs, carried out through multiple opaque transactions, the police said.
The money was traced to Italy, where prosecutors in Florence took up the case and police followed the paper trail to San Casciano in Val di Pesa, near Florence. There, they identified a real-estate complex comprising 11 units and 14 plots of land used as vineyards and olive groves, as well as works of art and other assets.
“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 CHF 18,000,000, to be enforced against the identified assets,” the statement added.
Andress rose to fame in the 1962 James Bond film Dr No, emerging from the sea in a white bikini. Her career in film and television spanned more than two decades.
