Social media personality Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan will remain in jail for another 30 days after the Bucharest Tribunal accepted DIICOT's request to extend the brothers' preventive arrest, Agerpres reported.

The two have been in custody since December 30, 2022, their terms being extended several times by the judges. They are investigated on allegations of forming an organized crime group, human trafficking, and rape.

According to BBC, the brothers' lawyers told a closed court in Bucharest that prosecutors had brought no new evidence to the March 22 hearing. They also suggested their clients' notoriety was contributing to the decision to extend their custody. Romanian courts have previously described Andrew Tate as a flight risk.

Prosecutors allege the Tate brothers formed an organized crime group with the purpose of recruiting women and coercing them into producing pornographic content that was then distributed for a fee on profile websites. They allegedly recruited young women under the pretext of starting a love relationship, after which they took them to a house in Ilfov county, where the women were forced to produce videos. Agerpres reported that victims told the investigators that a video chat studio was set up in the villa in Ilfov county.

Romanian prosecutors seized several of the Tate brothers' cars cars during their investigation, among them a Rolls Royce Wraith worth USD 380,000.

About a month after being arrested, Andrew Tate complained about the living conditions in his cell in Romania, describing it as dark and infested with cockroaches and lice.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea)