Luc Besson under investigation over funding of Film City complex in Paris

Paris prosecutors are investigating how filmmaker Luc Besson's vast €170 million (HK$1.8 billion) Film City studio complex outside the French capital has been financed, according to judicial sources.

The acclaimed director, producer and screenwriter, known for , , and scores of other films, opened the Hollywood-style facilities in September last year, fulfilling a long-held ambition of being able to make an entire movie in France.

The source said late on Thursday that prosecutors had handed the preliminary probe over to the police department in charge of fighting corruption, financial and tax violations, after state auditors queried the way in which the construction of the complex was financed.

According to a report last month in daily citing a "confidential note" written by the auditors, these suspect possible "embezzlement of public funds".

But Besson's production firm EuropaCorp, which helped finance the complex, said: "The probe will show that it did not benefit from any embezzlement of public funds, and nor did its directors or shareholders."

The complex is located in the working-class Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, in an Art Deco-style former thermal power plant that Besson had used to shoot scenes from in 1990 and the 1994 .