Disgraced influencer Andrew Tate will face trial on charges of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, authorities in Romania said Tuesday.
Tate, his brother, Tristan, and two other suspects have been under house arrest after a police investigation that led to their arrests in December. They deny the allegations.
Romania's organized crime agency, DIICOT, said in a statement that it would send four people to court: two British American dual nationals and two Romanians. The Tate brothers are dual U.S.-British nationals.
Authorities did not explicitly name Andrew and Tristan Tate on Tuesday, but a spokesperson for the brothers confirmed their indictment.
"While this news is undoubtedly predictable, we embrace the opportunity it presents to demonstrate their innocence and vindicate their reputation," the spokesperson, Mateea Petrescu, said in a statement.
The indictment will allow the Tates and their team to "present a comprehensive body of evidence, diligently collected and prepared over time, which will undoubtedly substantiate the brothers’ claims of innocence," Petrescu said.
No trial date has been set.
Prosecutors accuse the four defendants of forming a criminal gang at the beginning of 2021, the crime agency statement said, to carry out human trafficking in Romania, the U.S. and the U.K.
The statement alleges that the four men falsely brought seven victims to Romania by misleading them into thinking they were in a real romantic relationship, a grooming technique DIICOT called “the loverboy method.”
The victims were then taken to houses in Ilfov county, which surrounds Bucharest, and subjected to physical violence, mental coercion and sexual exploitation, DIICOT said. Three of the victims are civil parties in the criminal case.
An unnamed defendant is accused of having accessed a digital device belonging to one of the victims and posted pictures of her in what DIICOT called “compromising poses.”
The indictment provided a long list of property that prosecutors have requested permission to seize, including 15 properties, 15 luxury cars, two metal ingots and a medal, as well as bitcoin, the virtual currency, worth about $385,000.
Romanian authorities said in January they had seized luxury cars and other assets worth $3.9 million from a compound near Bucharest, the capital, as part of the investigation.
The brothers were remanded in custody and released on house arrest in March.
Tate is a former kickboxer who has built up a massive social media following by sharing provocative, often misogynistic views about the role of women and masculinity.
Teachers across the English-speaking world and beyond have discussed how to deal with young people who have been influenced by Tate's more extreme views.
He was banned from several leading social media platforms last year but has since been reinstated on Twitter, where he has continued to update his followers about his detention.
On Tuesday, Tate retweeted a Twitter account with the username @Tatenews_, which said: "Up until now no judge has reviewed the evidence in the case file. It was all based on arguments to keep the Tate brothers in jail and under house arrest."
CORRECTION (June 20, 2023, 1:44 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated how much bitcoin prosecutors want to seize from Tate. It is about $385,000, not $385,000,000.
