Professional kickboxer and online celebrity Andrew Tate, his brother Tristan, and two others have been detained by Romanian authorities on charges of human trafficking and rape.
A court agreed to detain 36-year-old Tate and his brother in Bucharest for 30 days as prosecutors continue their investigation into the group. The two brothers have denied the allegations and said they plan to appeal the detention, Reuters reported.
Romanian authorities announced the charges in a Thursday statement, though they didn’t identify Tate by name.
“The four suspects … appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost,” prosecutors said, according to the Reuters report.
Tate allegedly detailed this in a now-archived page from his website, in which he described how he gained most of his wealth.
According to NBC News, Tate described running a “webcam studio” in Romania and said that his job was to “meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together.”
Authorities said that they have been in contact with six women who were allegedly victimized by the group.
“We are not at a stage where guilt or innocence is proven, for now we only discuss preventive measures,” said Tates’ lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, according to the BBC.
It is not yet known whether Tate has posted bail, but his Twitter account has been active.
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