BUCHAREST, Romania — Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, have left for the U.S. after a travel ban on them was lifted, an official said Thursday.
The brothers are also charged with forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate also faces an additional charge of rape.
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It wasn’t clear under what conditions the Tates—who are avid supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump and boast millions of online followers—were allowed to leave Romania.
An official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the case, said that the decision was at the discretion of prosecutors.
Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors approved a “request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania,” but that judicial control measures remained in place. The agency didn’t say who had made the request.
“These include the requirement to appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned,” the statement read. “The defendants have been warned that deliberately violating these obligations may result in judicial control being replaced with a stricter deprivation of liberty measure.”
Andrew Tate, 38, and Tristan Tate, 36—who are dual U.S.-British citizens—were arrested near Romania’s capital in late 2022 along with two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four last year. In April, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled that a trial could start but didn’t set a date. All four deny all of the allegations.
The Tates’ departure came after Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a U.S. official in the current Trump administration had expressed interest in the brothers’ legal case in Romania at the Munich Security Conference. The minister insisted it didn’t amount to pressure.
While it is unclear whether the request to lift the brothers’ travel ban came from the U.S., Cristi Danilet, a former judge in Romania’s northern city of Cluj, said that such an agreement would be unprecedented.
“I have never heard of a foreign government asking Romania to lift preventive measures to allow some suspects to leave the country,” he told The Associated Press. “If I had been a judge, this would not have happened.”
“If it is true, it means that there is no more rule of law and sovereign countries,” he added.
In December, a court in Bucharest ruled that the case against the Tates and the two Romanian women couldn’t go to trial because of multiple legal and procedural irregularities on the part of the prosecutors.
That decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeal was a huge setback for DIICOT, but it didn’t mean the defendants could walk free. The case hasn’t been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania.
Last August, DIICOT also launched a second case against the Tate brothers, investigating allegations of human trafficking, the trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, influencing statements and money laundering. They have denied all of the charges.
Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer and self-described misogynist who has amassed more than 10 million followers on X, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors in Romania have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.
The Tates brothers’ legal battles, however, aren’t limited to Romania.
Late last year, a U.K. court ruled that in a separate case against the Tate brothers, police can seize more than 2.6 million pounds ($3.3 million) to cover years of unpaid taxes from the pair and froze some of their accounts. Andrew Tate called it “outright theft” and called it “a coordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system.”
Last March, the Tate brothers appeared at the Bucharest Court of Appeal in a separate case after U.K. authorities issued arrest warrants over allegations of sexual aggression in a case dating back to 2012-2015.
The appeals court granted the U.K. request to extradite the Tates, but only after legal proceedings in Romania have concluded.
—Stephen McGrath reported from Sighisoara.
