Italian authorities have impounded 20 million euros ($23 million) value of property, artworks and monetary assets in and round Florence that have been allegedly bought with cash stolen from unique Bond woman Ursula Andress, Italy’s monetary police mentioned in a press release on Thursday.
The seizures have been the results of an investigation launched after Andress reported to Swiss authorities that she had been swindled out of assets by monetary advisers.
The 90-year-old former Bond woman instructed Swiss newspaper Blick in January that she had been defrauded out of 18 million Swiss francs, roughly 20 million euros, by her long-time monetary adviser over an eight-year interval. The newspaper mentioned the adviser had died in the meantime.
“I’m nonetheless in shock,’’ Andress was quoted as saying. “I used to be intentionally chosen as a sufferer. For eight years, I used to be courted and wooed. They lied to me shamelessly and exploited my goodwill in a perfidious, certainly prison, manner in order to take all the things from me. They took benefit of my age.’’
The stolen funds have been invested in international corporations, used to purchase assets after which channeled by way of transactions designed to hide their supply, Italian authorities mentioned.
They have been traced to the acquisition of 11 actual property properties, 14 plots of land cultivated as vineyards and olive groves, together with artworks and monetary assets in Florence and the neighboring Tuscan countryside.
Authorities didn’t say if any arrests have been made.
Swiss-born Andress is finest generally known as the primary Bond woman, Honey Ryder, in 1962’s “Dr. No,” which featured her memorable entrance rising from the ocean 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 transitioned to a European cinema and tv profession, earlier than retiring in the early 2000s.