(Bucharest) Influencer Andrew Tate, who is awaiting trial in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges, lost his appeal on Thursday for the court to ease geographic restrictions preventing him from traveling outside the country. ‘Eastern Europe.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled against Tate, who challenged a May 10 decision extending restrictions on the 37-year-old by 60 days, stipulating that he could not leave the country. Tate had requested to be able to leave Romania, on the condition that he remained in the European Schengen area without identity checks, which Romania partially joined in March.
“It’s not about wanting to leave the country,” Eugen Vidineac, one of Tate’s lawyers, told reporters in court. “There is traveling freely and there is leaving the country. The right to travel is a constitutional right, it is a legal right, one of the fundamental rights. »
Tate, a former professional kickboxer and American and British citizen, was initially arrested in December 2022 near the Romanian capital Bucharest, along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally charged the four in June last year. They denied the allegations.
After their arrest, the brothers were detained for three months by police before being placed under house arrest. They had then been restricted to the municipality of Bucharest and the neighboring county of Ilfov, but can now travel freely within Romania.
Andrew Tate, who has 9.3 million followers on the social network X, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.
He had previously been banned from various prominent social media platforms for allegedly expressing misogynistic views and for hate speech.
On April 26, the Bucharest court ruled in favor of the prosecutor’s case against Tate, saying it met the legal criteria and the trial could proceed. However, no date has been set.
Other cases against Tate
In a separate case, Tate also faces a civil action brought by four British women in the United Kingdom, after a complaint was filed by the British High Court, according to a statement made earlier this month by the law firm representing the four women.
They claim that Tate sexually and physically assaulted them and reported him to British authorities in 2014 and 2015. After a four-year investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service decided in 2019 not to prosecute him. The alleged victims then turned to crowdfunding to bring civil action against him.
In a third separate case, the Tate brothers also appeared before the Bucharest Court of Appeal in March after British authorities issued arrest warrants following sexual assault allegations in a British case dating back to 2012.
The appeal court accepted the British request to extradite the Tate brothers to the United Kingdom, but only after the conclusion of legal proceedings in Romania.