Friday, March 27, 2026 - Italian authorities have impounded €20 million ($23 million) in property, artworks, and financial assets in and around Florence, allegedly bought with money stolen from original Bond girl Ursula Andress, Italy’s financial police said Thursday.
The seizures follow an investigation launched after Andress
reported to Swiss authorities that she had been defrauded by her financial
advisers.
The 90-year-old former Bond star told Swiss newspaper Blick
in January that she lost 18 million Swiss francs (around €20 million) over an
eight-year period to her long-time financial adviser, who has since died.
“I am still in shock,’’ Andress said. “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 to
take everything from me. They took advantage of my age.’’
Italian authorities said the stolen funds were invested in
foreign companies, used to purchase assets, and funneled through transactions
designed to hide their origin. The trail led to 11 real estate properties, 14
plots of land cultivated as vineyards and olive groves, as well as artworks and
financial assets in Florence and the surrounding Tuscan countryside.
Authorities did not disclose whether any arrests have been
made.
Swiss-born Andress is best known as the first Bond girl,
Honey Ryder, in 1962’s Dr. No, where she made her iconic entrance emerging from
the sea in a white bikini. She also starred alongside Elvis Presley in Fun in
Acapulco and with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in Four for Texas, before
transitioning to European cinema and television and retiring in the early
2000s.
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