Andrew Tate has lost an appeal against a court’s decision to keep him under house arrest.
The divisive influencer is charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming a crime gang to sexually exploit women.
On Thursday, the Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled against the 36-year-old’s appeal which had challenged the decision to place him under house arrest for 30 more days.
It came days after Romania’s anti-organised crime agency, Diicot, formally charged Tate, his brother Tristan and two Romanian women.
All four have denied the allegations.
Before the appeal court’s final ruling on Thursday, two judges disagreed on whether or not to uphold the house arrest measure, so a third judge was required to preside over the ruling.
The Tate brothers’ spokeswoman, Mateea Petrescu, said that although they lost the appeal an initial decision in the process was a “great step forward” because one judge thought “the brothers should be allowed to move freely in Romania without restrictions".
She said the brothers “continue to put their faith in the Romanian justice system”.
Andrew Tate, a self-declared misogynist, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and there is a political conspiracy designed to silence his views.
The Tate brothers, who are dual UK-US citizens, won an appeal on March 31 to be moved to house arrest after spending three months in police detention.
Prosecutors allege that the four defendants formed a crime gang in 2021 “in order to commit the crime of human trafficking” in Romania, as well as in the US and Britain.
There are seven female victims in the case, they allege, who were lured with false pretences of love 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.
The women were allegedly controlled by “intimidation, constant surveillance” and claims they were in debt, the prosecution claims.
Andrew Tate was previously banned from several prominent social media platforms for expressing hate speech and misogynistic comments, including that women should bear responsibility for being sexually assaulted.
