Photograph: few days later, Tate was thrown out after footage emerged of him beating an ex-girlfriend with a belt (although both Tate and the woman deny abuse and say the clip showed consensual sex).

“I know I’m the most intelligent person in the house. He appeared to be a born provocateur: “I don’t care if nobody likes me,” he told the other contestants. But by 2016 Tate had left the ring and entered another pugilistic arena, Big Brother. Commentators squawked about his “multilayered techniques” and “sharp punches to the body”. In 2009, he was ranked number one in his division in Europe. His career didn’t begin online – he was a kickboxer. He is a master of buzzwords, hashtags, soundbites and inflammatory language. He claims to have mastered the social media algorithms that sends posts ripping through cyberspace like a plague. His content on TikTok has been viewed more than 12.7bn times. Tate responded by ramping up the controversyīut how could that be true? How does a former kickboxer from Luton convert notoriety on social media into his claimed Musk-scale wealth? And more pressingly, for Tate at least, what will the Romanian investigators discover about his money-making activities? If he is found guilty, he could be detained in a Romanian jail for the best part of 20 years.Īndrew Tate is a social media phenomenon. Oh, and he told a Twitch Stream that he’s the world’s first trillionaire.” Young, disaffected men began to follow him in their droves. He gets more views on social media than Rihanna. “He’s one of the most Googled people on the internet. Tate sounded like another self-obsessed attention screecher on social media.

I usually cover wars, international crises, old-school corruption. I’d never heard of Tate until last summer. The four are suspected of being part of a human trafficking group, although they say they are innocent. Two Romanian women, Georgiana Naghel, and a former police officer called Alexandra Luana Radu, were also detained. Top G and his younger brother, 34-year-old Tristan, were led away in handcuffs. Officers wearing balaclavas stormed Tate’s compound by cover of night, and say they found guns, knives and large sums of cash. His arrest on 29 December by armed members of Romania’s anti-corruption unit – the ones who arrest gangsters – was over allegations of people trafficking and rape.

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