In Bucharest & London
EPABritish-American influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate – who are facing trial in Romania on charges of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering – have left the country after prosecutors lifted a two-year travel ban.
Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, left Bucharest on a private jet early on Thursday. Both deny the allegations against them.
Romanian prosecutors stressed the case against them had not been dropped and they would be expected to return, understood to be at the end of next month.
However, their decision has raised concern that they came under pressure from leading figures in the Trump administration, with one leading Romanian politician saying she was outraged.
The brothers are facing separate, unrelated charges in the UK over allegations of rape and human trafficking, which they also deny. A separate, civil case has been opened in the US.
Romanian reports said they were heading to Fort Lauderdale in Florida on a non-stop flight that would take 12 hours, however the Tates’ lawyer in Bucharest denied to the BBC that was their destination.
The Tate brothers were first arrested in Romania in December 2022. The elder of the two, a former kickboxer who appeared on UK TV show Big Brother, was later accused of rape and human trafficking while his brother was suspected of human trafficking.
They both denied those charges and spent several months under house arrest. A year later, in August 2024, they faced new allegations including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons.
Andrew Tate is a self-described misogynist who has attracted millions of followers online, despite being previously banned from social media platforms for expressing his views.
He moved from the UK to Romania several years ago, however police in Bedfordshire are still seeking his extradition on separate and unrelated allegations of rape and human trafficking, as well as tax evasion.
Thursday’s decision by Romanian prosecutors to lift the ban on the Tates leaving the country is believed to have come in the wake of comments from figures in the Trump administration earlier this month.
The Tates have regularly posted messages in support of US President Donald Trump, and Tristan Tate has said his brother’s role in persuading “millions of young men” to back him “cannot be overlooked”.
Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told Romanian TV that Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, had brought up the issue of the Tate brothers during a conversation at the Munich Security Conference earlier in February.
Hurezeanu said his discussion with Trump’s envoy had only been an informal one and he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a “form of pressure”. Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident from his “publicly available tweets”.
Four British women have also taken out a civil case against Andrew Tate at the UK High Court, alleging that he raped and coercively controlled them. Tate denies their allegations.
They said it was clear he would not face criminal prosecution in Romania and appealed to UK authorities to take action.
“We are in disbelief and feel re-traumatised by the news that the Romanian authorities have given into pressure from the Trump administration to allow Andrew Tate to travel around Europe and to the US,” the women said in a statement.
Elena Lasconi, who is running for the Romanian presidency in May’s elections, six months after they were controversially cancelled, has called for the immediate resignation of the head of Romania’s organised crime investigations directorate DIICOT, which made the decision to let the brothers leave.
“I am outraged!” she wrote on social media, “as a woman, a human being and a Romanian.” Lasconi said prosecutors should explain publicly whether their decision came as a result of external pressure.
Prosecutors from DIICOT have emphasised that the judicial conditions for the brothers have not changed.
Any violation of those obligations made in bad faith “may lead to the replacement of judicial control with a higher measure of deprivation of liberty”, it said in a statement in Romanian.
The Tates are understood to be required to return to Bucharest at the end of March to satisfy the prosecutors’ terms, however it is too early to say whether they will comply with them.
Romania is both a member of the European Union and a key Nato member state on the Western alliance’s eastern flank.
Senior Trump figures have also had the government in Bucharest in their sights over the court ruling that annulled last December’s presidential election. Romanian intelligence services said far-right candidate Calin Georgescu had been supported by a flurry of TikTok accounts engineered by Russia.
Georgescu was indicted on Wednesday for attempted “incitement to acts against the constitutional order”.
