A Romanian judge today denied Andrew Tate bail and ruled that he must remain behind bars on sex trafficking charges.
Tate, 36, was arrested on December 29 along with his brother Tristan on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group to exploit women.
Last month, he lost his appeal against a judge’s February 21 decision to extend his arrest for a third time by 30 days.
And today, Tate appeared at a bond hearing that he hoped would result in his release from prison and placement under house arrest after nearly three months behind bars.
However, his request was rejected by the judge this afternoon. The influencer said he was “disappointed” by the decision as he had “high hopes” of reuniting with his family, before adding that his lawyers will appeal the decision.
Andrew Tate has been denied bail by a Romanian judge who ruled that he must remain behind bars on sex trafficking charges.
Tate, 36, was arrested on December 29 with his brother Tristan on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group to exploit women.
Tate appeared at a bond hearing that he hoped would result in his release from prison and his house arrest after nearly three months behind bars.
A Tate spokesperson told MailOnline: “Unfortunately, the Romanian court system rejected Andrew Tate’s bail request today. We are disappointed with this result as we had high hopes of seeing Andrew reunited with his family.
Your legal team will appeal this decision within 48 hours.
The court’s decision can be seen below:
‘[The Court] It dismisses the request to replace the measure of preventive detention by the measure of judicial control under bail formulated by the defendant TEA as inadmissible in principle. With the right to appeal within 48 hours of notification.’
Tate’s legal team will appeal the decision to reject the influencer’s bail. If this appeal is also denied, he will remain behind bars until at least March 29.
Following the judge’s decision, Tate’s lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, said: “At first sight, the court’s decision is illegal because the principle of inadmissibility concerns a question of the impossibility of the judicial act, a principle that cannot be applied in this case”.
Tate’s brother, Tristan, will attend his bail hearing tomorrow.
His two accomplices, Luana Radu, 32, a former police officer in Bucharest, and Georgiana Naghel, 28, a model believed to have been dating Tate for nearly a year, will also attend bail hearings tomorrow and Thursday respectively. None of the four have yet been formally charged.
Last week, Tate denied that he has cancer after confirming last week that he has a ‘dark spot on his lung’.
Former police officer Luana Radu (left) and Georgiana Naghel (right) are suspected of aiding the Tate brothers in the crimes for which they are being investigated.
Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate arrive at the Court of Appeal in Bucharest, Romania, on February 27 with Radu and Naghel.
Tate’s Twitter account said the scar on his lung “is from an old battle” after medical details were released last week.
‘I don’t have cancer. My lungs contain precisely 0 damage from smoking. In fact, I have a lung capacity of 8 liters and the vital signs of an Olympian,” the update read.
‘There’s nothing but a scar on my lung from an old battle. True warriors are scarred both inside and out,” the post added in a style that has become typical of Tate’s social media posts since his arrest.
Last month, the Bucharest court confirmed a third 30-day detention for Tate and Tristan. It is the third separate appeal the brothers have lost against the decisions to extend their detention while investigations continue.
Ramona Bolla, a spokeswoman for Romania’s anti-organized crime agency DIICOT, said prosecutors also won an appeal against a court’s decision to place Radu and Naghel under house arrest, rather than full detention.
A document explaining a previous decision to keep them in jail says the judge took into account the “particular dangerousness of the defendants” and their ability to identify victims “with greater vulnerability, in search of better life opportunities.”
Tate, who has lived in Romania since 2017, was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech. He has repeatedly claimed that Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and claimed that his case is a ‘political’ conspiracy designed to silence him.
DIICOT said in a statement after the December arrests that it had identified six victims in the human trafficking case who were allegedly subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion” and sexually exploited by members of the alleged criminal group.
The agency said the victims were lured under pretenses of love and then intimidated, placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being forced to engage in pornographic acts for the criminal group’s financial gain.
In January, Romanian authorities stormed a compound near Bucharest linked to the Tate brothers and seized a fleet of luxury cars that included a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari and a Porsche. They reported the seizure of assets with an estimated value of $3.9 million.
Prosecutors have said that if they can prove the owners of the cars made money through illegal activities such as human smuggling, the assets would be used to cover the costs of the investigation and to compensate the victims. Tate also unsuccessfully appealed the asset seizure.