Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on additional sex crime charges days after being rushed to hospital for emergency heart surgery.
The disgraced movie mogul, 72, is facing new charges ahead of his retrial in New York, however the indictment will remain under seal until Weinstein is arraigned on the new charges on September 18.
Weinstein is recovering at a Manhattan hospital following emergency surgery to remove fluid on his heart and lungs, and was not present at a hearing on Thursday over the fresh charges.
It came as prosecutors retrying Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction disclosed last week that they had begun presenting evidence of up to three additional allegations against Weinstein, dating as far back as the mid-2000s.
The alleged crimes in the new indictment reportedly include sexual assaults at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, and in a Lower Manhattan residential building between late 2005 and mid-2006.
The indictment also includes an alleged sexual assault at a Tribeca hotel in May 2016.
Because the indictment is under seal, it was not known whether the new charges involved some or all of the additional allegations.
Earlier this year, Weinstein saw his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges overturned and he was ordered to undergo a new trial.
Prosecutors have since been seeking to retry Weinstein for those 2020 charges, however it is unclear whether the new charges will be included in the retrial, according to the Associated Press.
The new charges come after prosecutors in Britain announced last week that they would no longer pursue charges of indecent assault against Weinstein.
He has languished in prison in New York ever since his conviction, after he became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement in 2017 when women began going public with accounts of his behavior.
At the hearing on Thursday that Weinstein missed, a judge ruled that the producer’s ailing health means he will be allowed to remain at Bellevue Hospital instead of being returned to Rikers Island.
Weinstein, who co-founded the film and television production company Miramax, has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.