Internet personalities Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania in one of two investigations, have been allowed to leave the country.
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 did not 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.”
The Financial Times reported last week, citing sources, 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.
Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu denied he had faced 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.
Pending the criminal investigation, the Tates are under judicial control, a light preventative measure under which they are required to check in with the police regularly. They were first detained in 2022.
It is not clear whether the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is set to visit Trump at the White House on Thursday, had any prior knowledge of the change in their status.
First arrested in 2022
A self-described misogynist, social media influencer Andrew Tate has gained millions of fans by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say denigrates women.
Tate, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36 were arrested near Romania’s capital in late 2022 along with two Romanian women, accused of forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Several women alleged they were detained under false pretences, put under surveillance and forced to appear in pornographic videos.
Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four last year, with Andrew Tate also charged with rape. In April 2024, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled that a trial could start but did not set a date.Â
Romanian prosecutors have indicted the influencer and former kickboxer on charges that include human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Andrew Chang explores Tate’s rise to fame and the case against him.
All four accused denied the allegations.
In December a court in Bucharest ruled that the case against the Tates and the two Romanian women could not 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 did not mean the defendants could walk free. The case has not been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania that was launched that includes charges of money laundering.
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 ($4.7 million Cdn) 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 co-ordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system.”
Andrew Tate has said he moved to Romania after being investigated in the United Kingdom on charges of sexual assault, which were ultimately dropped.