Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, along with two other Romanian suspects were arrested by the police from their luxury villa in Bucharest on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group.
On Thursday, Romanian police arrested controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group. Hours later, twitterati buzzed with news of his release, claiming the charges against him were bogus, with Tate’s supporters mocking ‘feminists, liberals, and tree huggers’ on Twitter.
However, reports revealed that videos being circulated of Tate’s release and his interactions with the police officials are not linked to his recent arrest and the old videos have only been recirculated by his fans. Neither the influencer nor the Romanian government have so far confirmed Tate’s release.
But this is not the first time Andrew Tate has emerged as one of the most talked about personalities. In fact, the 36-year-old British kickboxer has time and again hit the headlines for his controversial comments:
Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, along with two other Romanian suspects were arrested by the police from their luxury villa in Bucharest, Tate brothers’ lawyer told Reuters.
"The four suspects ... appear to have created an organized crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialized websites for a cost. They would have gained important sums of money," prosecutors from the anti organized-crime unit said.
They further revealed that they found six women who had allegedly been sexually exploited by the suspects. The Tate brothers had been under investigation since April for the alleged crimes and Romania's Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) on Thursday also released a video of the raid, showing guns, knives, and money on display in one of the rooms.
Twitterati reacted to Tate's arrest, with reports claiming that the police found the influencer's whereabouts from a pizza box. The Romanian pizza chain 'Jerry's Pizza' appearing in Andrew Tate’s response video to Greta Thunberg was reportedly used as proof for Romanian authorities to confirm his presence in the country, leading to the arrest of him and his brother in a human trafficking probe
Few days before his arrest, Tate created a twitter storm after he targeted the teenaged climate activist, Greta Thunberg, in a tweet where he wrote “Hello @GretaThunberg. I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start. Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.”
Twitterati was abuzz after Thunberg responded with “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.” Her tweet was retweeted and hailed by many but also had Tate posting more hateful and misogynistic tweets, including one with a video where he sits in a silk robe and questions her gender.
Tate has earlier too dismissed Thunberg’s climate activism, saying she “believes your government should tax you into poverty to stop the sun from being hot.”
This is not the first time that Tate has drawn flak for his misogynistic statements. In August, he was banned on this very microblogging site for saying that women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted, while replying to a #MeToo post.
Subsequently, he was also banned on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok, all of which cited that "misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated" on the platform.
For instance, in a Facebook post in 2018, he bemoaned the “decline of Western civilisation” after spotting a poster at the Heathrow airport “encouraging girls to go on holiday as opposed to encouraging being a loving mother and a loyal wife.”
His twitter handle was only recently reinstated alongside former United States President Donald Trump by Twitter's new CEO, Elon Musk.
This divisive personality rose to fame first in 2016 during his time on the reality show Big Brother, after he was evicted from the house over a video of him hitting a woman with a belt. A second video surfaced shortly afterwards, in which he is shown telling a woman to count the bruises he apparently caused to her.
On his eviction, Tate had dismissed the said videos as being fabricated, describing them as "a total lie trying to make me look bad."
Besides these widely reported incidents, Tate has acquired worldwide notoriety for many objectionable comments and videos over the years. For instance, in one, he said that he only dates women aged 18–19 because he can “make an imprint” on them; in another, he shared how he’d attack a woman if she accused him of cheating and said “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch.” In yet another questionable video, he called an ex-girlfriend who accused him of hitting her a “dumb hoe.”
In a video, he explained his decision to move to Romania five years ago, sharing that he was being investigated by the UK police for allegedly sexually abusing a woman, and admitted to moving in order to evade rape charges, stating that that is “probably 40% of the reason.” He proudly proclaimed in the video “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free,” The Guardian reported.
Andrew Tate has developed a personality cult through social media over time with his followers strongly defending him and promoting his “hateful” content, so much so that in July, he overtook Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump to become one of the most googled persons in the UK.
In fact, his rapid surge to popularity has been manufactured. As per a report on The Observer, followers of Tate are told to flood social media with videos of him, choosing the most controversial clips in order to achieve maximum views and engagement. His Tik Tok account shows around 11.7 billion views on his videos.