WARNING: The main points of this article on sexual exploitation.
Controversial social media personality and former kickboxer Andrew Tate has been arrested in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape, an official said Friday.
Tate, a British citizen who in the past was banned from social media platforms for expressing misogynistic perspectives and hate speech, was arrested Thursday night along with his British brother, Tristan, in the Ilfov region, north of the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
The four will be detained for 30 days in an investigation after a judgment was issued on extending their initial detention period for 24 hours, said Ramona Bolla, spokeswoman for the Directorate of Investigations against Organized Crime (DIICOT), a Romanian firm that fights organized crime. Bolla said the ruling was not final and can only be appealed.
DIICOT said last Thursday that the four suspects in the case had been arrested on club charges in a group of organized criminals, human trafficking and rape.
The firm said British citizens recruited women who were subjected to “acts of physical violence and intellectual coercion,” sexually exploited through members of the organization and forced to perform pornographic acts with the intention of obtaining “significant monetary benefits. “
Photographs published through Romanian media gave the impression of showing Tate being taken away handcuffed by masked law enforcement officers.
DIICOT said it knew of six other sexually exploited people through the organized criminal organization and that five houses were searched on Thursday.
On Friday, Andrew Tate, known for expressing conspiratorial opinions, tweeted that “The Matrix sent its agents,” without elaborating.
Earlier this week, Tate posted on Twitter a video of a mountainous region of Romania, the Eastern European country where he has reportedly lived for the past few years.
The Tate was also embroiled this week in a war of words with 19-year-old weather activist Greta Thunberg after tweeting a photo of him next to a Bugatti and bragging about owning 33 cars.
Hola@GretaThunberg I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8. 0L quad turbo. My DOS Ferrari 812s from the competition have 6. 5L v12s. Please provide your email address so I can send you a complete list of my car collection and their respective emissions masivas. pic. twitter. com/ehhOBDQyYU
Police said 11 luxury cars were found in the raids that belonged to or were used by the suspects.
Video footage of the police raid accompanying the organized crime agency shows several blurry sports cars, wads of money and a gun.
Bolla, the DIICOT spokesman, refuted widespread media claims that a lid brandished on a Romanian pizza box featured in a video posted by Andrew Tate on Twitter earlier this week led the government to his arrest. He said the claims are “funny, but no. “
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