Andrew Tate Loses Legal Appeal To End Detention In Romania – A Romanian court has ruled that the former kickboxer, influencer, and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate must remain in custody while an investigation into organized crime continues. Prosecutors detained Tate, 36, his brother Tristan, 34, and two Romanian female suspects on December 29 on suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and the formation of an organized crime group to exploit women. Both men have denied wrongdoing.
The defendants were appealing the seizure of their belongings and the extension of their arrest warrants, but the Bucharest court of appeals ruled on Tuesday that all four must remain in preventive detention for the full thirty days that they were remanded. “I am very disappointed – the measure seems excessive to me,” the brothers’ lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, told local media after the ruling, which was announced several hours after the two brothers left the courthouse after a six-hour hearing.
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In Romania, 15 luxury cars and more than 10 properties or plots of land have been seized. The country’s organized crime bureau, Diicot, stated that the belongings were confiscated to prevent their concealment, to fund the investigation, and to compensate victims if the suspects are found guilty. The agency and prosecutors in the capital of Romania allege that the two brothers recruited their victims by enticing them and fraudulently professing to want a romantic relationship — the so-called “loverboy” form of human trafficking.
The victims were then allegedly transported to houses on the outskirts of Bucharest, where they were compelled “through physical violence, mental intimidation, and coercion” to make pornographic content for social media sites, resulting in substantial revenues. Six victims have been identified thus far, according to the probe launched after one of the brothers reportedly raped one of the trafficked women last March. Vidineac had earlier argued there was “no evidence” to support the allegations.
He told the Romanian news outlet Gândul that the defense had not been able to properly study the prosecution’s file. “I will point this out from the beginning, that even up to the present moment, the criminal investigation file has not been made available to us to ensure the effective defense of our clients,” he said in a videotaped interview. He insisted there was “not a single piece of evidence, apart from the victim’s statement, leading to the idea that a crime of rape was committed”, and “no evidence either regarding offences of human trafficking and organized crime.”
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Vidineac said he believed Tate had been playing a particular kind of character on social media that may bear no relation to real life. “Can intent on social media stand as evidence in a criminal prosecution case?” he asked. Tate, who holds both US and British citizenship, has gained huge notoriety for misogynistic remarks and hate speech, prompting widespread fears that his videos were radicalizing young men online. He was banned from all major social media platforms, but his Twitter account – which has 4.4 million followers – was reinstated late last year after Elon Musk took over the company.
