We travel back to 1998 and things get very interesting indeed.

Actor Robert De Niro’s attorney denied his client’s involvement in an international prostitution ring. The actor was detained Tuesday for questioning in the matter, then released after nine hours. No charges were filed against him.

De Niro had been detained for nine hours by Paris judge Frederic N’Guyen about an alleged international prostitution ring that was broken up a year ago by French authorities.

De Niro’s name allegedly appeared in an address book seized in the course of the probe, according to police sources.

De Niro, 54, is not the only celebrity to have been associated with this case. A former Swedish fashion model, a Polish tennis star, and a French film producer have also been implicated.

De Niro’s attorney, Georges Kiejman, told reporters that De Niro knows a lot of beautiful women, and agreed it was entirely possible that his name appeared in an address book.

In fact, Kiejman added, De Niro told the judge he had met three of the women believed to be part of the prostitution racket. The actor said he had “shaken hands” with two of the women. His lawyer refused to comment on the nature of De Niro’s relationship with the third.

“I can categorically state, indeed Mr. De Niro has authorized me to do so, that he has never in his life ever paid to have any woman, including these three in question,” he said.

However, one of the three women in question, dated De Niro for years, according to RadarOnline in 2014:

According to upcoming biography De Niro: A Life, “there were at least three women involved in the prostitution ring who claimed to have met De Niro, one of whom, the English porn star Charmaine Sinclair, had told investigators that he had been her lover,” author Shawn Levy writes.

The buxom brunette spilled the dirty details of their sexual trysts, which she claimed occurred between 1990 and 1995, bragging to a British tabloid that De Niro “was attentive, very gentle and passionate. He left me totally satisfied. I know I’ll never make love like that again.”

De Niro didn’t deny he had sexual relations with the porn actress.

De Niro reportedly claimed he had met Bourgeois through tennis player Wojtek Fibak, who told him the soft-porn photographer could set him up with beautiful women.

“The first time Bourgeois showed me photos of girls, they were taken from mags like Lui and Playboy,” De Niro testified, according to Levy. “He said he could introduce me to them, in a friendly way, without any notion of money. It is possible that I chose one of these girls, and it seems that Charmaine Sinclair was the one.”

He later claimed he had sex with Sinclair in a St. Tropez villa, but “there was no money transaction.” He was not arrested or charged with any crime, found only guilty of having sex with a woman who at other times sold her body for large sums of money, the book claims.

READ MORE: