A Romanian court has ruled that internet star Andrew Tate should be placed under house arrest, his representative said in a social media post on Thursday.
Prosecutors have requested that Tate be detained for an additional 30 days after he was among six people taken into custody as part of an investigation into human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
The Romanian prosecutor had previously requested a 30-day detention of Andrew Tate, the Internet star’s representative said on Thursday.
The former professional kickboxer and his brother Tristan were among six people detained on Wednesday for an initial 24 hours after Romania’s anti-organized crime law enforcement unit DIICOT carried out four house searches in Ilfov County and the city of Bucharest.
He was already charged in mid-2023 along with his brother and two Romanian female suspects with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang for the sexual exploitation of women; they denied these charges.
“The Tate brothers have been presented with a request for 30 days of preventive detention by the Romanian DIICOT,” Tate’s representative said in a statement, adding that a hearing to decide on the detention will take place at 12:00 GMT in Bucharest.
The representative did not address the new allegations against Tate in his statement and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Before their recent detention, the brothers were subject to a travel ban that allowed them to travel within Romania but did not allow them to leave the country.
Social media influencer Tate, who describes herself as a misogynist, has gained millions of fans by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say degrades women.
A post on Tate’s account on social media platform X said: “They are just trying to damage my name with utter nonsense,” without specifying who he was referring to.
DIICOT said in a statement that it had ordered the detention of six people for crimes including forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking in minors, sexual intercourse with minors and money laundering.
It said it had requested that three of the detained defendants be kept in custody and another be placed under house arrest.
According to DIICOT, two of the defendants used the “Loverboy” method, which involves convincing victims that they are in a romantic relationship, to coerce 34 victims into creating pornography, which they then sold online for over $2.8 million and 887,000 tokens.
DIICOT alleges that one of the defendants forced a 17-year-old minor to produce pornographic material in the UK and Romania, making a profit of $1.5 million. The court also alleges that the same defendant repeatedly had sexual relations with a 15-year-old victim.
