Page 88 - bne Magazine February 2023

88 Opinion
bne February 2023
BUCHAREST BLOG
What the Andrew
Tate case says about corruption in Romania
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
When he moved to Romania in 2017, the disgraced influencer Andrew Tate notoriously commented that he chose to relocate from the UK because he liked living in countries “where corruption is accessible”.
That blasé statement has come back to bite him; Tate and his brother Tristan are now in custody while a criminal investigation into suspected human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group is carried out.
The Tate brothers were detained in Romania on December 29. They are suspected of using local women to produce lucrative pornographic content for social media sites, allegedly
luring them in initially by pretending to want a romantic relationship, then using force or coercion to get them to perform on camera.
"Victims were recruited by British citizens by misrepresenting their intention to enter into a marriage/cohabitation relationship and the existence of genuine feelings of love
(the loverboy method). They were later transported and housed in buildings in Ilfov county where, by acts of physical violence and mental coercion ... they were sexually exploited by group members by forcing them to perform pornographic demonstrations for the purpose of producing and disseminating material of such a nature through social media platforms," said a statement from Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) on December 29.
A video released by DIICOT shows guns, knives and money at the location where the Tates were arrested.
A former kickboxer, Andrew Tate has become a social media sensation in the last few years. He is now banned on most mainstream channels for infringements such as breaching hate speech rules, but an August 2022 profile by The Guardian says videos of Tate had been watched 11.6bn times on TikTok.
www.bne.eu
Andrew Tate's arrest in Romania. / DIICOT
Styling himself as a self-help guru, he peddles outdated notions such as that women belong in the home, are a man’s property and are partially responsible for getting raped, finding a receptive, mainly male, audience online.
He presents an aspirational lifestyle to his millions of followers, showing himself smoking cigars and with fast
cars – his fleet of vehicles was confiscated by Romanian prosecutors after his arrest – as he gives out tips on seduction and getting rich. As reported by The Guardian, he revealed in one podcast that he makes money by persuading girlfriends to video chat, then sharing their profits.
Some of his comments are so extreme they raised concerns among NGOs of young men being radicalised or encouraged to commit violence against women. His misogynist comments eventually got him banned by major platforms for hate speech, but he was allowed to return to Twitter after it was taken over by Elon Musk last year.
While there is now extensive coverage of the arrests and investigation on Romanian TV and in the print and online media, he was relatively little known inside the country until the end of 2022, when he became embroiled in an online spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Tate made an ill-advised boast to Thunberg on Twitter about his collection of 33 cars. He ended the post “Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.”
In a response that went viral and racked up almost 4mn likes and 300mn views, Thunberg wrote back: “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”
What brought the influencer to the attention of Romanians was the pizza box from Romanian chain Jerry’s Pizza in the