Controversial internet personality Andrew Tate has been detained in Romania on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group, authorities have confirmed.
Romanian prosecutors said they have detained the former professional kickboxer - banned from many social media platforms for misogynistic comments and hate speech - along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian nationals.
They will be detained for 24 hours, prosecutors from the anti organised-crime unit said in a statement after raiding their properties in Bucharest.
The Tate brothers have been under criminal investigation since April, they said.
“The four suspects ... appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost,” prosecutors said.
“They would have gained important sums of money.”
Prosecutors said they had found six women who reported being sexually exploited by the suspects.
The Tate brothers declined to comment but their lawyer confirmed they had been detained, said news agency Reuters.
Andrew Tate, born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Luton, has previously said women are partially responsible for being assaulted and that they belong to men.
He first came to prominence when he appeared on TV show Big Brother in 2016, but was removed from the programme after a video surfaced online which appeared to show him attacking a woman with a belt – a clip he claimed had been edited.
He went on to gain notoriety online, with Twitter banning him from the social media platform earlier this year after he said women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted.
Tate, along with other banned figures including former US president Donald Trump, saw his account restored following Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter.
Earlier this week, the British national was told to get a life by climate activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter after he told her he owned 33 cars with “enormous emissions.”
