Ramona Bolla, spokeswoman for Romania’s Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), told AFP on Friday that 4 suspects had been detained for 30 days after their arrest on Thursday night.
They are the former kickboxer Tate, of Anglo-American nationality, his brother Tristan and two Romanian citizens.
Tate and his brother were first detained for 24 hours, but prosecutors had asked a Bucharest court to extend the detention of the four suspects as part of their ongoing investigation.
Since early 2021, prosecutors have been investigating the suspects and had already searched the village of Tate in April.
The 4 suspects allegedly recruited and exploited them by forcing them into “forced labor. . . and pornographic acts with the aim of generating and disseminating such material” online for “substantial monetary benefits. “
So far, six potential patients have been identified.
Romanian police raided five locations across the country based on their investigation.
The move came just days after Tate had a heated Twitter exchange with Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg, who netizens say helped Romanian police arrest him.
Viral Twitter exchanges between Tate and Thunberg this week on topics ranging from “huge emissions” to pizza boxes have fueled hypotheses on social media.
Some netizens argued that the pizza logo featured in a video posted through Tate in his exchanges with Thunberg helped police verify Tate’s presence in Romania.
“That’s what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes,” Thunberg joked on Twitter after Tate’s arrest.
But DIICOT spokeswoman Bolla told AFP last Friday that “it is related. “
“For a user to be in the country or not, we use a total diversity of media,” he said, noting that “arrest warrants and raids” had already been placed.
Thunberg’s spokeswoman told AFP that her tweet this morning – which has so far amassed around 2. 4 million likes – was a “joke”.
The Romanian government “has contacted her,” the spokesman added.
Tate appeared on the Big Brother TV screen in 2016 but fell apart after a video surfaced showing him attacking a woman.
He moved to Romania years ago with his brother.
Tate was banned from social media platforms for misogynistic comments and hate speech, but was allowed to return to Twitter after Elon Musk bought the company.