Brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate left the DIICOT premises at around 5pm on Wednesday after about eight hours in the parquetry unit. They were brought in for a computer search of several electronic devices in their possession. Their lawyer says that only the existing content on the devices was stored and it is to be interpreted at a later date.
„All the existing data on the respective media were downloaded, without performing an interpretation of the respective data or printing the images or their phone listing. Absolutely nothing, nothing. All the respective disks, the detailing of the data extracted from the respective devices is to be carried out in the next period.
Andrew Tate has made what we believe to be compelling and comprehensive statements in relation to all the allegations made in the case and we believe that, through these statements, things have been greatly simplified in terms of the further progress of the prosecution”, said the Tate brothers’ lawyer, Constantin Ioan Gliga.
According to the quoted source, during the raids carried out about nine months ago, the CCTV footage of the two Brits’ house was also seized.
„We point out that those surveillance cameras have been in the custody of the police for more than 9 months, and those images have not been filed in the case file, although they could have been a very good element in the defense, because it could have been easily observed that at no time was any of the persons in question prevented from leaving the house in question or forced to do anything against their will, but it seems that the images were not intended to be edited, or rather attached to the case file”, added Constantin Ioan Gliga.
On leaving the DIICOT, lawyer Eugen Vidineac, the two brothers’ lawyer, said he had spoken to his clients about the conditions of detention.
„I asked Andrew and he told me that (…) yes, it’s a fact that cockroaches are his friends at night”, said Vidineac.
Upon leaving the DIICOT headquarters, Andrew Tate said he is innocent.
„God knows the truth. There is no evidence in my file,” the millionaire told journalists present at the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office.
„Ask the police,” said Tristan Tate, when asked if there was any evidence of the crimes he is suspected of.
Brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate were brought Wednesday morning from the Capital Police custody to the DIICOT headquarters for new procedural acts in the case of human trafficking, establishment of an organized criminal group and rape. One of the two women arrested with the two British millionaires, a former policewoman from the Police Station 7, was also brought in.
On Friday, the Bucharest Court of Appeal will decide whether they will remain in custody or be released.
A week ago, the former policewoman accused of helping the Tate brothers sexually exploit at least six young women was taken out of custody to be present for a computer search of her mobile phone. Judicial sources told Gândul at the time that the Tate brothers and Georgiana Naghel would also be brought to DIICOT for computer searches. Prosecutors are seeking to identify conversations relevant to the investigation that they may have had on WhatsApp, Messenger or Telegram.
During the latest searches, investigators are said to have seized the mobile phone of Ana B., the woman from Popești-Leordeni considered the „key” witness in the Tate brothers’ case. Ana B. managed the Tate brothers’ multimillion-dollar accounts, from which she paid the salaries of the videochat girls and the rest of the employees, but also made other payments. Prosecutors are to search the phone in her presence, judicial sources told Gândul.
Last week, the „bomber” Vlad Obu was also at the DIICOT, who said he was heard as a witness in the case of brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate.
Judicial sources told Gândul at the time that DIICOT prosecutors also searched Vlad Obu’s phone, looking for new evidence on how the Tate brothers recruited the girls who were put on video chat, as well as other possible „dangerous connections”. Vlad Obu is considered an „imitation” of the Tate brothers, whom he tried to copy and to whom he was close.
Brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, together with Georgiana Naghel and Luana Alexandra Radu, received their first preventive arrest warrants on December 30, 2022, after they had been detained by the DIICOT prosecutors the day before, following the searches of their villa in Pipera and their videochat studio.
On January 20, at the request of the prosecutors, the Bucharest Court extended their preventive arrest warrants for another 30 days, from January 29 to February 27. Although the decision is not final and has already been challenged by the Tate brothers’ lawyers, they remain in custody until at least January 28, the last day of the first arrest warrant. In the coming days, the Bucharest Court of Appeal is due to decide whether Andrew and Tristan Tate and their two accomplices will remain in pre-trial detention or will be released or placed under house arrest from January 29.
DIICOT prosecutors succeeded in convincing the judge at the Bucharest Court to extend the Tate brothers’ arrest warrants, arguing that, left free, they „could exercise psychological control over the victims”.
Prosecutors also say that brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate could flee Romania if released from custody. In this context, DIICOT prosecutors used an earlier statement made by one of the two eccentric millionaires, in which he said he had accounts in 19 countries around the world and could fly using several passports.
„If I am wrong and England wants me in jail, I can fly with a Nigerian or American or English or Polish or Estonian passport. I have bank accounts in 19 countries,” the prosecutors quoted the statement of one of the Tate brothers in the report.
The arguments and evidence presented by the DIICOT prosecutors convinced the Bucharest Court to extend their preventive arrest warrants for another 30 days, and the judge considered that their release „would create real risks for the proper conduct of the criminal trial”.
Andrew and Tristan Tate are accused of „setting up an organized criminal group in 2021 with a view to committing the crime of trafficking in human beings on the territory of Romania and other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom”.
„The victims were then transported and housed in buildings in Ilfov county where they were physically abused and psychologically coerced (through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and the allegation of debts), they were sexually exploited by members of the group by being forced to engage in pornographic acts with a view to producing and disseminating material of such a nature via social media platforms and by being forced to perform forced labor in order to obtain significant financial benefits consisting in sums of money obtained as a result of users accessing the material”, according to the DIICOT.
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