Andrew Tate to be moved to house arrest, lawyer says

Andrew Tate, the divisive internet personality who has spent months in a Romanian jail on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking, has won an appeal to replace his detention with house arrest.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Tate’s appeal, which challenged a judge’s decision last week to extend his arrest a fourth time for 30 days, said Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania’s anti-organised crime agency, DIICOT.

Tate, 36, a British-US citizen who has 5.4 million Twitter followers, was initially detained in late December in Romania’s capital Bucharest, along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women.

All four won an appeal on Friday, and will remain under house arrest until April 29, Bolla said. The court ruled in favour of their immediate release. Prosecutors cannot challenge the appeal court’s decision, which was final, Bolla added.

In previous rulings that extended their stay in police custody, judges have said the Tate brothers posed a flight risk and that their release could jeopardise the investigation.

Under Romanian legislation, prosecutors have filed charges against the four suspects, but the case is still under investigation and has not gone to trial.

“The decision is final, the investigation continues,” Bolla told Reuters adding prosecutors have until the end-June to send the suspects to trial.

Tate, a professional kickboxer who has resided in Romania since 2017, was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech. He has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and alleged their case is a “political” conspiracy designed to silence him.

DIICOT said in a statement after the arrests that it had identified six victims in the human trafficking case who were allegedly subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion” and sexually exploited by members of the alleged crime group.

The agency said victims were lured with pretences of love and later intimidated, placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into engaging in pornographic acts for the financial gain of the group.

In January, Romanian authorities descended on a compound near Bucharest linked with the Tate brothers and towed away a fleet of luxury cars that included a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari and a Porsche. They reported seizing assets worth an estimated $US3.9 million ($5.8 million).

Prosecutors have said that if they can prove the cars’ owners gained money through illicit activities such as human trafficking, the assets would be used to cover the expenses of the investigation and to compensate victims. Tate unsuccessfully appealed the asset seizure.

Tate’s lawyer Eugen Vidineac said the brothers were forbidden from contacting witnesses and from leaving the house without approval from authorities. “We do not yet have the court’s motivation, we do not know whether there are other interdictions.”

As the brothers left the detention facility late on Friday in Bucharest, Tristan Tate told a scrum of reporters that “the judges today made the right decision”.

“I respect what they’ve done for me and they will be vindicated in their decision because I’m an innocent man and I can’t wait to prove it,” he said.

Some Tate supporters outside the facility chanted “Top-G, Top-G,” using a popular moniker many of Andrew Tate’s fans refer to him as.

Read More