Andrew Tate loses court bid to reclaim £10million of assets seized by Romanian cops including Lamborghini in fleet of luxury cars
- A judge ruled the Tate brother’s assets will be retained as collateral to be sold
Andrew Tate has lost a bid to have his assets returned, including some 15 luxury motors, several properties and decadent watches, amid his ongoing trial on sex trafficking charges.
Instead, a Romanian judge ruled the assets of Andrew, 37, and his brother Tristan, 35, will remain under the control of authorities in Bucharest as collateral, ready to be sold off to pay their alleged victims if the brothers are found guilty.
A source with knowledge of the case told The Sun that Tate’s sports cars – a monstrous fleet of three Porsches, two BMWs, two Ferraris, one Aston Martin, one McLaren, one Lamborghini and five Mercedes – were seized as part of the investigation and will not be returned.
Tate is also known to have posed with a pair of extremely high-end motors including a Rolls-Royce Wraith and a Bugatti Chiron, both of which were also confiscated.
Other luxurious items seized by investigators include 14 luxury watches – two Hublot, three Patek Philippe, one Cartier, three Audemars Piguet, one Akribos, two Rolex, one Ulysse Nardin, and one Breitling – as well as several plots of land and houses in and around Bucharest.
One of the houses has eight bedrooms and spans 424 square metres, while the other has four bedrooms and spans 153 square metres, the source claimed.
A spokesperson for Tate confirmed the judge’s decision to MailOnline, but declined to comment further.
The pair can declare intention to appeal the ruling within 48 hours.
Pictured: Andrew Tate poses next to a Bugatti Chiron in a now-famous photograph after he used it to taunt environmental activist Greta Thunberg shortly before his arrest
Former professional kickboxer and social media influencer Andrew Tate (C), followed by his brother Tristan (L), arrives for an appeal against preventive detention at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, in Bucharest, Romania, 01 August 2023
Vehicles including a Rolls-Royce, BMW and Mercedes-Benz were seen being taken away in January
Romania’s DIICOT police unit dedicated to unravelling organised crime marched into the Tate brother’s compound on January 5 this year, just days after the pair were taken into custody.
Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania’s DIICOT investigations agency, confirmed that the cars had been seized.
She declared the fleet was being held to ‘sustain the cost of the investigation’ into Tate, and that they would be used as collateral to fund any payments to the alleged victims of the brothers’ alleged crimes.
Bolla added that investigators were working on establishing whether the Tate brothers purchased the car with funds made through human trafficking.
Tate’s copper-coloured Bugatti Chiron – a hypercar worth some £2.5 million – became infamous after he posted a picture of him filling up its tank while bragging about his collection of luxury cars in an effort to mock Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
‘Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions,’ he tweeted along with the picture, tagging Miss Thunberg.
She replied: ‘Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalld***[email protected],’ to which Tate replied with a two minute video of himself smoking a cigar in a bathrobe, sitting in front of pizza boxes.
Tate was branded the ’emperor of cringe,’ before he and his brother were arrested a matter of hours after he posted the video in late December 2022, with Miss Thunberg getting in the last laugh, writing in jest: ‘This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes’.
Tate is seen in front of several luxury cars at his compound in Romania
Andrew Tate beams as a purple McLaren is delivered to him at his home in Romania
DIICOT alleges that Tate, his brother Tristan and two Romanian women – Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel – formed a criminal group in 2021 ‘in order to commit the crime of human trafficking’ in Romania, as well as in the United States and Britain.
There are seven female victims in the case, DIICOT said, who were lured on false pretenses of love and transported to Romania, where the gang sexually exploited them and subjected them to physical violence.
Prosecutors allege these victims had been brought to Romania where they were intimidated, surveilled and forced to take part in pornography. One British woman, referred to as Sophie to protect her identity, claimed Andrew slapped and strangled her to the point of passing out ‘during rough sex’. Another is said to have been raped twice, prosecutors said.
The Tate brothers meanwhile have vehemently denied all charges brought against them.
Andrew, speaking to the BBC earlier this year, said: ‘I know the case intimately and you don’t. I have seen all the criminal files and the evidence against me and you haven’t.
‘I know the truth of what happened and you don’t. And I’m telling you absolutely and utterly, I’ve never hurt anybody, that the case that’s been put against me is completely and utterly fabricated and I’m never going to be found guilty of anything.’
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