By Octav Ganea
BUCHAREST (Reuters) -A Romanian court has ordered internet personality Andrew Tate to be placed under house arrest, his representative said on Thursday, after he was among six people taken into custody in an investigation into human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
The former professional kickboxer and his brother Tristan were among six people detained on Wednesday for an initial 24 hours after Romania’s anti-organised crime prosecuting unit DIICOT conducted four home searches in Ilfov county and the Bucharest municipality.
DIICOT asked the Bucharest court to arrest the Tate brothers for 30 days, but the judge decided to place Andrew Tate under house arrest and Tristan under judiciary control for that period, their representative Mateea Petrescu said.
“The Tates salute the decision and firmly deny all allegations levelled against them, emphasising that the accusations are baseless and unsupported by substantial evidence,” Petrescu wrote in a statement.
Tate was already indicted in mid-2023 along with his brother and two Romanian female suspects for human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, allegations they denied.
Before their latest detention the brothers had been subject to a travel ban, under which they were free to travel within Romania but not leave the country.
A self-described misogynist, social media influencer Tate has gained millions of fans by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say denigrates women.
A post on Tate’s account on social media platform X said “All they try to do is damage my name with complete bullshit”, without specifying who was being referred to.
DIICOT said in a statement that it had ordered the detention of six people for crimes including forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering.
It said that it had requested that three of the detained defendants remain in custody while another one be put under house arrest.
According to DIICOT, two of the accused used the “loverboy” method, which involves convincing victims that they are in a romantic relationship, to force 34 victims into making pornography which they then sold online for proceeds of over $2.8 million and 887,000 tokens.
DIICOT alleges that one of the defendants forced a 17-year-old minor to produce pornography in Britain and Romania creating profits of $1.5 million. It also alleges that the same defendant repeatedly had sexual relations with a 15-year-old victim.
(Reporting by Octav Ganea, Alan Charlish and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Alex Richardson and Nick Zieminski)
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