Andrew Tate: Romanian court rejects bail request from arrested influencer

A Romanian court has rejected a bail request from misogynistic social media influencer Andrew Tate, who is detained on suspicion of organized crime and human trafficking.

Tate, 36, a British-US citizen who has 5.3 million Twitter followers, was initially detained in late December in Bucharest, along with his brother Tristan, and two Romanian women. None of the four has yet been formally charged in the case.

After a morning hearing Tuesday at the Bucharest Tribunal, a judge rejected Tate's bail request, said Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania's anti-organized crime agency DIICOT. It is not clear what bail conditions were proposed by Tate's legal team.

In Romania, it is rare for defendants under preventative arrest for serious crimes to request posting bail. More common are requests to be placed under other judicial conditions such as house arrest or geographical restrictions.

The court's decision comes after the Tate brothers lost an appeal last month against a judge's 21 February ruling to extend their arrest for a third time for 30 days. It was the third separate appeal they lost against decisions to extend their detention while investigations continue.

A January court document explaining a previous arrest extension noted “the possibility of them evading investigations cannot be ignored,” and said they might “leave Romania and settle in countries that do not allow extradition.”

Tate will remain in detention until at least 29 March.

Before Tuesday's court decision, a post appeared on Andrew Tate's Twitter account, that read: "If you want a life people will aspire for, you'll need to be prepared to defend it."

Tate, who has lived 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 December 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 pretenses 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 crime group.

Tate was born in the US but came to live in Britain when he was four years old. He is also the founder of Hustler’s University, an online “academy” where members pay a monthly membership fee in exchange for advice on how to make a passive income from several online industries.

His popularity soared after videos of him began circulating on TikTok. At the time of writing, the hashtag #AndrewTate has accumulated 12.7 billion views.

He is currently banned from a handful of popular social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. He was reinstated on Twitter after Elon Musk took over the platform.

Associated Press