Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate have left Romania for the U.S. after a travel ban on them was lifted, an official said Thursday.
The brothers are charged with human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
It is not clear under what conditions the Tates — who are keen supporters of President Donald Trump and boast millions of online followers — were allowed to leave Romania.
An official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said the decision was at the discretion of prosecutors.
Andrew Tate, 38, and Tristan Tate, 36 — who are dual U.S.-British citizens — 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 did not set a date. All four deny all of the allegations.
The brothers' departure came after Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a U.S. official under the current Trump administration had expressed interest in the brothers’ legal case in Romania at the Munich Security Conference. The minister insisted it didn’t amount to pressure.
In December a court in Bucharest ruled that the case against the Tates and the two Romanian women could not 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 Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, but it did not mean the defendants could walk free. The case has not been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania.
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