Online influencer Andrew Tate has been detained in Romania after being handed an arrest warrant issued by UK authorities, his spokesperson has said.
Tate, 37, was arrested alongside his brother Tristan on Monday night on allegations of sexual aggression that date back to between 2012 and 2015.
They both appeared in court on Tuesday. Bucharest's Court of Appeal postponed a decision on the warrant.
Andrew Tate, and Tristan, 35, "categorically reject all charges", their representative said.
Lawyers representing four British women who accused Tate of rape and sexual assault wrote to British police to immediately seek his detention after receiving information he was planning to flee Romania.
In a statement, McCue Jury & Partners, the law firm representing the four women said: "This morning, it came to our attention that Tate has been detained in Romania after an arrest warrant and extradition request was issued by the authorities in the United Kingdom to Romania in respect of allegations of sexual offences during the same period in which our clients allege Tate raped and assaulted them.
"Last week, we received information that Tate might have been planning to flee Romania, where he is due to stand trial for separate allegations of rape and human trafficking.
"We wrote to the British police to bring this to their attention and to urge them to immediately seek a warrant for Tate's detention in Romania and extradition to the UK.
"While we cannot and do not comment on any knowledge of ongoing investigations, we are grateful that the British authorities have decided to take action and take heed of our concerns and the concerns of our clients.
"Tate is accused of serious criminal offences against a large number of victims and must be held accountable for those actions."
Tate’s spokesperson Mateea Petrescu said the Bucharest Court of Appeal is set to make a "pivotal decision" on Tuesday on whether to execute the warrants issued by Westminster Magistrates Court.
Four women had reported Tate to British authorities for alleged sexual violence and physical abuse, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute him.
The alleged victims then turned to crowdfunding to cover their legal costs as they pursued a civil case against him."We handed over our evidence about the horrific acts of violence we endured and waited for action. But four years later we were told the U.K. authorities would not prosecute him," they state on their campaign page. "It's our one remaining route to hold him accountable."
The kickboxer-turned-influencer is charged in a separate case in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
He was arrested near Bucharest in December 2022 along with Tristan and two Romanian women.
Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four in June last year and they have denied the allegations.
Romania’s anti-organized crime agency alleged the four defendants formed a criminal group in 2021 “in order to commit the crime of human trafficking” in Romania as well as in the United States and Britain.
The agency alleged seven female victims were misled and transported to Romania, where the gang sexually exploited and subjected them to physical violence.
One defendant is accused of raping a woman twice in March 2022, according to the agency.
Tate, who has amassed 8.9 million followers on X, has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.
He was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and for hate speech.After their arrest in Romania, the Tate brothers were held for three months in police detention before being moved to house arrest. They were later restricted to the areas of Bucharest Municipality and nearby Ilfov County.In January, Tate won an appeal challenging the seizure of his assets by Romanian authorities, which were confiscated in the weeks after he was arrested.Romanian authorities had seized 15 luxury cars, 14 designer watches and cash in several currencies worth an estimated 3.6 million euros ($3.9 million).
Shortly before his arrest, Tate provoked environmental activist Greta Thunberg on X, boasting about his cars and the emissions they produce. In response, she tweeted: “please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com”.Tate hit back with a video in which he asked someone off-camera to bring him pizza, sparking theories that the Romanian pizza boxes allegedly informed authorities of Tate’s whereabouts.
The self-proclaimed "misogynist" has earned infamy for his offensive remarks on social media since his brief stint on Big Brother in 2016 - which also ended in scandal after he was removed from the show over a video that appeared to show him attacking a woman - a clip he claimed had been edited.
