Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who are facing human trafficking charges in Romania, have left for the U.S. after their travel ban was lifted, according to officials.
Romanian media reported that the Tate brothers, who are also charged with forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, took a private jet from Băneasa airport in Bucharest for Fort Lauderdale early Thursday morning.
An official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the case, said the decision for the brothers, who are dual U.S.-British citizens, to head back to the U.S. was at the discretion of prosecutors.
The Tate brothers remain under criminal investigation for trafficking of minors, sex with a minor and money laundering. Andrew also faces an additional charge of rape. They have both denied any wrongdoing.
Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors approved a “request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania” but that judicial control measures remained in place. The agency didn’t say who had made the request.
“These include the requirement to appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned,” the statement read. “The defendants have been warned that deliberately violating these obligations may result in judicial control being replaced with a stricter deprivation of liberty measure.”
Ioan Gliga, a lawyer for the brothers, told CNN that they left Romania and are flying to Florida in a statement. “They no longer have a travel ban … The prosecutor, at the request of the lawyers, modified the content of the obligations previously imposed,” Gliga said.
Gliga also said that the Tate Brothers are expected to return to Romania in less than a month for their next court appearance on March 24.
It wasn’t clear under what conditions the Tates — who are avid supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump and boast millions of online followers — were allowed to leave Romania.
Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that Trump’s administration had expressed interest in the brothers’ legal case in Romania at the Munich Security Conference.
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Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu later confirmed that he had discussed the Tate brothers with U.S. officials, but had not been pressured to lift restrictions on them after speaking with Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, in Germany.
“I did not perceive this statement as pressure, just a repeat of a known stance,” Hurezeanu told Euronews. “I don’t know what pressures of another nature were made before or after, but what I discussed with Mr. Grenell was cordial, informal, brief, non-binding and I certainly did not detect any form of pressure.”
Andrew, 38, and Tristan, 36, were arrested near Romania’s capital in late 2022, along with two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four last year. In April, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled that a trial could start but didn’t set a date. All four deny the allegations.
In December, a court in Bucharest ruled that the case against the Tates and the two Romanian women couldn’t go to trial because of multiple legal and procedural irregularities on the part of the prosecutors.
That decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeal was a huge setback for DIICOT, but it didn’t mean the defendants could walk free. The case hasn’t been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania.
Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer and self-described misogynist who has amassed more than 10 million followers on X, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors in Romania have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.
The Tate brothers’ departure from Romania to the U.S. comes after an American woman filed a countersuit against them earlier this month. She claimed Andrew and Tristan attempted to recruit her into a webcam sex trafficking ring and alleged they defamed her after she gave testimony to Romanian authorities.
The civil complaint filed in a circuit court in Palm Beach County, Fla., has one accuser, identified as Jane Doe, 23, in the documents.
“I look forward to my day in court, where evidence and facts — not narratives — will decide the outcome,” Jane Doe said in a statement.
Her lawyer, Dani Pinter, senior vice-president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said she has been “relentlessly harassed, threatened, and sued for merely cooperating with Romanian authorities.”
“Andrew and Tristan Tate have worked to ruin her life by suing her and her parents — an abuse of the legal system and blatant witness intimidation,” Pinter said on Feb. 10. “Today, she is fighting back against this use of lawfare and her counterclaim against the Tate brothers shows that she will not be intimidated by their attempts to silence her.”
She alleges the brothers’ actions have caused her severe emotional distress and is seeking financial compensation at an amount to be determined at trial. She is also seeking a court order prohibiting the Tate brothers from “contacting, harassing or defaming” her.
Joseph D. McBride, a lawyer representing Andrew and Tristan, said there was no evidence that his clients had engaged in human trafficking.
“The fact that these people are now doubling and tripling down on what is nothing more than an abject lie is absolutely hilarious,” he said, adding that “there is no chance in hell that they’re going to win.”
Jane Doe’s suit is the first U.S.-based lawsuit against the Tate brothers.
The Tate brothers’ legal battles aren’t limited to just Romania and the U.S.
They are also facing a lawsuit in the U.K. after a court ruled against the Tate brothers and said police can seize more than 2.6 million pounds ($3.3 million) to cover years of unpaid taxes from the pair and froze some of their accounts. Andrew called it “outright theft” and “a coordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system.”
Last March, the Tate brothers appeared at the Bucharest Court of Appeal in a separate case after U.K. authorities issued arrest warrants over allegations of sexual aggression in a case dating back from 2012 to 2015.
The appeals court granted the U.K. request to extradite the Tates, but only after legal proceedings in Romania have concluded.
— With files from The Associated Press
