By Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST (Reuters) -Online influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan left Romania on a private flight to the U.S. on Thursday and arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, their media team said, after prosecutors lifted a travel ban related to criminal charges against them.
A self-described misogynist, Andrew Tate has gained millions of online fans by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say denigrates women.
He and his brother are under investigation in Romania on accusations of forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering. They have denied all wrongdoing.
A source with knowledge of the matter said the brothers would return towards the end of March to fulfil legal obligations related to their criminal case in Romania, which require them to check in with police at regular intervals.
The Financial Times reported last week that members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had pressured Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the Tates, former kickboxers with dual U.S. and British citizenship.
A U.S. source familiar with the matter denied that the U.S. put any pressure on Romania to drop the case against the two, but acknowledged that Washington had pressed Bucharest to give the brothers their passports and allow them to travel.
Romanian prosecutors said the ban on leaving Romania had been lifted, without saying what had motivated the decision.
“The request to change the obligation of not leaving Romania was approved,” they said. “All the other obligations have been maintained, including the requirement to check in with judicial authorities every time they are called.”
‘SLAP IN THE FACE’
A lawyer representing one of Tate’s alleged victims, a U.S. woman, accused the United States of failing to protect her by allowing them into the country.
“This is a slap in the face to all the victims of the Tate brothers especially the U.S. victim who is not being protected by her country,” said Dani Pinter of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center (NCOSE).
Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu denied he had faced U.S. pressure, but said the Tates were mentioned during his brief hallway meeting with Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.
Asked if the United States would ensure that Andrew and Tristan Tate returned to Romania to face their criminal trial, a senior Trump administration official told reporters that they had “no insight right now on anything related to the Tate brothers” but would follow up.
Tate’s media team announced on Thursday that a Romanian court had ruled in favour of an appeal by the brothers, who were first detained in 2022, and lifted the seizure of multiple assets.
“This decision restores ownership of properties, vehicles, bank accounts, and company shares to the rightful owners, Andrew and Tristan Tate and their companies,” they said in a statement, adding that some assets remained under precautionary seizure.
The Romanian network to prevent violence against women, which groups 24 non-governmental organisations, asked prosecutors on Thursday to explain why the travel ban was lifted, “so that any kind of doubt regarding the independence and impartiality of the Romanian judicial system be dispelled.”
An initial criminal case against Tate and his brother failed in December when a Bucharest court decided not to start the trial and sent the files back to prosecutors, citing flaws in the indictment.
A British arrest warrant has also been issued for the Tates and they will be extradited after Romanian trial proceedings are completed. The allegations in Britain – denied by them – relate to sexual aggression between 2012 and 2015.
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie in Bucharest, additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Susan Heavey and Andrea Shalal in Washington, Alan Charlish and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw; Editing by Alexandra Hudson, Sharon Singleton, Philippa Fletcher and Mark Heinrich)
