Controversial British-American influencer Andrew Tate was arrested Thursday in Bucharest, Romania on suspicion of rape and human trafficking.
He will be held in custody in Romania for 30 days, after a court agreed to the police’s request.
Tate and his brother Tristan, who was arrested with him, deny the allegations against them.
Authorities suspect that the two, along with two Romanian men, ran an organized crime group.
Romanian authorities claimed that the four suspects formed an organized crime group that stretched from Romania to the United Kingdom and the United States, with the aim of committing the crime of human trafficking.
Authorities stated that at least six women were “sexually exploited by the organized crime group.”
Authorities claim that two of the suspects tricked the victims into “believing that they intended to enter into a marriage/cohabitation relationship” while driving the victims to Romania and later sexually abused them with physical violence and coercion.
Prosecutors said the Tate brothers have been under criminal investigation since April: “It appears that the four suspects […] Created an organized crime group with the aim of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to produce pornographic content intended to be viewed on special websites for a fee […] It seems they would have earned significant sums of money.”
Authorities also said one of the suspects raped one of the women on two separate occasions in March 2022.
Andrew Tate, 36, who was born in the US but has British citizenship, was a professional kickboxer and is now best known for his viral rants on social media about male dominance, female submission and wealth. He openly supports violence against women and was previously banned from every major social media platform until Elon Musk got his Twitter account back after buying the company.
He became notorious earlier this year when his misogynistic ideas became popular among young boys. Before he was removed, his TikTok account had amassed about 11.6 billion views.
He became a symbol of toxic masculinity on the Internet due to his misogynistic statements and, among other things, accused women of raping them. He also proudly declared himself mixed.
He made headlines this week for his Twitter interaction with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, when he mocked her by tweeting about his many cars “and their huge emissions”. She wrote to him in reply “to get a life”. A number of netizens speculated that in one of the tweets in which he mocked Thunberg when he wrote that he would not recycle a pizza tray and uploaded a picture of himself, he accidentally revealed his location to the authorities. However, the representatives of the authorities said that there is no basis for these claims.
Tate has yet to directly respond to the allegations against him. However, after he was arrested, a tweet was sent from his Twitter account that alluded to the movie “The Matrix” from 1999: “The Matrix sent their agents.” There may also be an allusion to the male Red Pill movement, which took inspiration from the film and was also widely accused of misogyny and encouraging misogyny.
The Matrix sent their agents.
— Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) December 30, 2022
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