Italy seizes €20m of assets allegedly bought with money embezzled from Ursula Andress

Italian authorities have seized €20m (£17.3m) of assets in Tuscany, including property, vineyards and olive groves, allegedly bought with money embezzled from the actor Ursula Andress.

Andress, 90, had filed a complaint in her native Switzerland alleging a “progressive and significant depletion of her assets” by individuals charged with managing her finances, Italy’s financial crimes police said in a statement on Thursday.

Ursula Andress’s performance alongside Sean Connery in Dr No (1962) helped launch her career in film and television. Photograph: Danjaq/Eon/Ua/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Prosecutors in the Swiss canton of Vaud built a picture of a “systematic misappropriation of financial resources” worth about 18m 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 began following the paper trail.

They tracked it to San Casciano in Val di Pesa, near Florence, and a real-estate complex consisting of 11 units and 14 plots of land used as vineyards and olive groves, as well as works of art and other assets, the statement said.

“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,” it added.

No suspects were identified in the statement.

Andress surged to fame thanks to a scene in the 1962 James Bond movie Dr No, in which she emerged from the sea on to a Caribbean beach in a white bikini, knife at her hip and a seashell in each hand.

That performance opposite Sean Connery launched a career in film and television that lasted for more than two decades.