Romanian prosecutors have requested that Andrew Tate be detained for another 30 days, the internet personality’s representative said on Thursday, adding that he is among six people detained in an investigation into human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Six people, including the former professional kickboxer and his brother Tristan, were detained for an initial 24 hours on Wednesday when Romania’s anti-organised crime prosecution unit DIICOT searched four houses in Ilfov county and a Bucharest municipality.
He was accused in mid-2023, along with his brother and two Romanian female suspects, of forming a criminal gang to commit human trafficking, rape and sexual abuse of women, although he denied these charges.
“The Tate brothers have been issued a motion for 30 days of preventive arrest by the Romanian DIICOT,” Tate’s representative said in a statement. He added that a hearing to decide on detention would take place in Bucharest at 1200 GMT.
The rep did not comment on the new allegations against Tate in a statement and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prior to their latest arrest, the brothers were subject to a travel ban under which they were free to travel within Romania but could not leave the country.
Tate, a self-described misogynist social media influencer, has gained millions of fans by promoting a hyper-masculine lifestyle that critics say degrades women.
A post on Tate’s account on the social media platform X said: “They just want to tarnish my name by doing nonsense”, although he did not specify what he was referring to.
In a statement, DIICOT said it had ordered the detention of six people for crimes including forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, having sex with minors and money laundering.
He said he had requested that three of the detained defendants remain in custody, while another be placed under house arrest.
According to DIICOT, the two accused used the “loverboy” method, in which victims are led to believe they are in a romantic relationship, and forced 34 victims to create pornography, which they later sold online for proceeds of more than $2.8 million and 887,000 tokens.
DIICOT alleges that one of the accused forced a 17-year-old minor to produce pornography in the UK and Romania, earning him a profit of $1.5 million. It is also alleged that the same accused had repeated sexual relations with the 15-year-old victim.
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