Former professional kickboxer and controversial internet personality Andrew Tate was arrested along with his brother in Romania on Thursday, Portal reports.
Romanian prosecutors said in a CBS News statement that search warrants were being carried out in several homes on Thursday on suspicion of “an organized criminal group” involved in “human trafficking and rape.”
The organized crime group was set up by four suspects in early 2021 with the aim of committing human trafficking in Romania, the US and Britain to “receive important financial gains”, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, six women were found to have been sexually exploited by the organized crime group.
Two British nationals and two Romanian nationals were arrested, prosecutors said, and taken to law enforcement headquarters in Bucharest. After the interrogation, it was decided to detain her for 24 hours, prosecutors added. There was no word about what would happen to them after that.
Portal said this and other photos it received showed Andrew Tate being escorted out of law enforcement headquarters on Thursday:
Andrew Tate is escorted by police officers outside the headquarters of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) in Bucharest, Romania, December 29, 2022. PHOTOS INQUAM / Octav Ganea / Portal
“The four suspects … appear to have formed an organized crime group with the aim of recruiting, harboring and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content to be viewed on specialized websites for a fee,” prosecutors said in a statement to Portal.
Tate and his brother Tristan were among the four people arrested, prosecutors told Portal.
Lawyers for the Tate brothers confirmed to Portal that they had been taken into custody.
The two brothers have been under criminal investigation since April, Portal said.
Tate, who was born in the US but raised in the UK, is known for spreading hate speech, misogyny and violence. In August, he was banned from both Facebook and Instagram for violating Meta’s policies on dangerous organizations and individuals. He was also banned from posting on YouTube.
In 2017 he was suspended Twitter for saying that women “are responsible” for sexual assault as allegations of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein poured in. He was rehired to Twitter last month after Elon Musk took over the company.
Earlier this week, Tate got caught in one Twitter feud with climate activist Greta Thunberg.
In response to the report of Tate’s arrest, Thunberg tweeted on Friday“This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes.”
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