A court in Romania’s capital ruled on Friday that the social media influencer Andrew Tate may leave Romania, but he must remain in the European Union while awaiting trial in Bucharest for human trafficking and rape charges, according to one of his lawyers.
Mr. Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, have been battling charges brought by Romanian prosecutors in a June 2022 indictment, which accused them and two Romanian women of forming an organized criminal group and trafficking women across Romania, Britain and the United States.
Mr. Tate, 37, a British American former kickboxer, has gained a large online following by marketing a brand of masculinity tied to chauvinistic views, conservative values and lavish displays of wealth.
Eugen Vidineac, one of Mr. Tate’s lawyers in Romania, said in an interview on Friday that the court was gradually loosening its grip on the Tate brothers.
“It was a good decision,” he said. “It’s natural that things are going more and more relaxed in time.”
The judge was evaluating whether an indictment was legal, Mr. Vidineac said, adding that a date had not been set for the next hearing.
The brothers were put in jail for three months in December 2022 and placed under house arrest in April 2023. That August, a court ordered their release but demanded that they stay in Romania.
“I am free,” Mr. Tate said Friday on social media, asking his followers for advice on whether he should travel to Cannes, France, the Italian Alps or elsewhere in Europe, and which sports car he should drive. “For the first time in three years, I can leave Romania. The sham case is falling apart.”
In another post, Mr. Tate shared a video of his brother and himself smoking cigars while dancing to Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.”
The brothers have denied the accusations and said that their wealth had made them targets.
The Tates were detained in March on a separate arrest warrant issued by the British authorities that accused the brothers of sex crimes. Andrew Tate has been barred from prominent social media sites, and many have criticized him for his misogynistic views, including British educators.
Joseph McBride, a lawyer in New York who is representing Mr. Tate in a defamation suit, which he filed against a woman in Florida over allegations that contributed to the charges in Romania, said that the brothers’ legal team was celebrating the ruling as a victory.
“Anybody’s who’s being tried with human trafficking, if it’s a serious case, there’s no way that the controls would loosen, there’s no way that the guys would be let back on the street,” Mr. McBride said in an interview.
The ruling, he added, was “clear, resounding proof that the allegations against them are based on falsity.”
Content Source: www.nytimes.com