Online influencer Andrew Tate has been detained in Romania and handed an arrest warrant issued by British authorities, his spokesperson announced on Tuesday.
Ms Tate, 37, and her brother Tristan Tate were taken into custody on Monday night on suspicion of sexual assault in a British case dating from 2012 to 2015, said spokeswoman Mattea Petrescu.
He said the Bucharest Court of Appeal would make a “very important decision” on Tuesday on whether to execute the warrant issued by Britain’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Four women had reported Tate to British authorities, accusing him of sexual assault and physical abuse, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute him.
The alleged victims then turned to crowdfunding to cover the legal costs of filing civil lawsuits against him.
“We submitted evidence about the horrific acts of violence endured and waited for action. But four years later we were told that the British authorities would not prosecute him,” they say on their campaign page. “That’s the only way we have to hold him accountable.”
Tate is charged in a separate case in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal organization to sexually exploit women.
He was arrested near Bucharest in December 2022 along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women.
Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four in June last year, but they deny the charges.
Andrew Tate, who has amassed 8.7 million followers on social media platform X, has repeatedly claimed that Romanian prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.
He had previously been banned from various prominent social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.
After the Tate brothers were arrested in Romania, they were held in police custody for three months before being transferred to house arrest.
Later, they were confined to the city of Bucharest and the nearby areas of Ilfov County.
Tate won an appeal in January challenging the seizure of his assets by Romanian authorities, but his assets were confiscated within weeks of his arrest.
Romanian authorities seized 15 luxury cars, 14 designer watches and an estimated $3.9 million worth of cash in multiple currencies.
