Romania indicts Andrew Tate on trafficking-of-minors and money-laundering counts

Romanian anti-organised-crime prosecutors indicted Andrew Tate on Friday on charges of trafficking minors, money laundering, sex with a minor and witness tampering. His brother Tristan was indicted for complicity. Two Romanian nationals are named in the same file. The brothers, who hold US and British passports and lived in Romania from 2017, have denied the allegations since their first arrest in Bucharest in December 2022.

They are not in Romania today. British authorities asked the United States to extradite them on a separate set of charges covering alleged offences against four people between July 2010 and August 2017. US marshals arrested them in Miami on 18 July. They are in the Federal Detention Center there. London has until 16 September to file a full extradition request with the State Department.

The new Romanian indictment is a second, or in parts a third, pass at the same investigation. In December 2024 the Bucharest Court of Appeal sent the original file back to prosecutors to be redone. DIICOT, the directorate that handles organised crime and terrorism, then split some counts into a separate case to reduce the risk that limitation periods would expire. HotNews reported that split. BIRN saw court records of the fresh indictment dated Thursday evening.

Prosecutors describe a method they have alleged since 2023: the brothers recruited women by pretending to offer a relationship or marriage, then forced them into webcam work. The new charging document, as summarised by Romanian and British outlets, includes an allegation that Andrew Tate recruited a girl of 15 and exploited her in Britain and Romania between 2012 and December 2021. Investigators also want four cars bought between December 2023 and July 2024, worth about $1.25 million, treated as proceeds and seized. A June expansion of the file alleged that almost 3 million euros from exploitation moved through two companies between 2018 and 2022.

A DIICOT spokesman said it was not yet clear whether Romania would seek the brothers' extradition from the United States. They can be tried in absentia under Romanian law. The trial will not start at once. The British extradition track and the Romanian indictment can run at the same time. A US court will decide which foreign request, if either, is honoured first.

The brothers became famous as online instructors in a brand of male grievance. That fame is why a Romanian charging decision is international news. It is not evidence. An indictment is an accusation that has cleared an internal prosecutorial threshold and will now have to be proved in front of judges. The first Romanian case has already been returned once for more work. Defence lawyers will argue that the split file is an attempt to keep a weak case alive. Prosecutors will argue that the appeal court's remand was a chance to tighten the proof.

Three jurisdictions now have paper on the same two men: Romania, the United Kingdom and, as the holding state, the United States. Each file covers different years and different alleged victims. None of those alleged victims should be identified here. The public facts that can be stated without recycling unverified narrative are the charge list, the Miami detention, the 16 September British deadline, the 2024 appeal-court remand, and the request to confiscate the four cars.

What happens next is procedural. Bail in Miami is a US question. Extradition is a State Department and district-court question. Service of the Romanian indictment on men held abroad is a letters-rogatory question. None of that will be quick. The indictment dated 4 September is the first time DIICOT has put the trafficking-of-minors counts into a formal charging instrument after the appeal court's reset. That is the news. The rest is a long court calendar in three countries.