EXCLUSIVE | Voluntari police officers suspected of helping the Tate brothers escape some charges. Former policewoman Luana Radu is alleged to have been the contact

The investigation into the case of brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who were remanded in custody after being charged with human trafficking and rape, has also brought to light possible abuses committed by some Voluntari police officers.

They allegedly tried to persuade at least one victim of the Tate brothers and their two female accomplices to drop charges of deprivation of liberty.

The arrest of the two Britons has raised questions about how, from 2016 until the end of 2022, they managed to raise millions of euros from the sexual exploitation of young girls without ever getting into trouble with the law, especially in the context of the human trafficking charges brought by the DIICOT prosecutors in December, when they also arrested them.

Judicial sources revealed to Gândul that, in fact, the Tate brothers did get into trouble with the law, but they allegedly were helped by some workers within the Voluntari Police.

In this sense, it would be an incident that took place before the first searches in April 2022, when the villa of brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, in Pipera, was raided by the Ilfov policemen, mobilized after a referral from the US Embassy. At the time, the diplomatic staff informed the police that a young woman, an American citizen, had been lured to Romania and kidnapped in a villa in Pipera, where an attempt was being made to sexually exploit her in a videochat studio.

The case was closed

During the investigation, which reached DIICOT shortly after the April 2022 raids, prosecutors established that at least one woman had gone to the Voluntari police headquarters to complain that she had been kidnapped in the building where the Tate brothers’ videochat studio was set up, and had been beaten there by former police officer Luana Alexandra Radu and Georgiana Naghel.

The victim apparently managed to escape from the videochat studio and ended up at the Voluntari police station, where she filed a complaint.

According to the quoted sources, the police officer who registered her complaint would then have called Luana Alexandra Radu to the Voluntari Police headquarters, where he would have recommended her as his „former colleague”.

The officer allegedly insisted that the woman who complained she had been kidnapped and assaulted drop the charges. Subsequently, say the sources cited, the case was closed by the Ilfov investigators.

The Brits Andrew and Tristan Tate arrested in Romania for human trafficking

Brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, together with Georgiana Naghel and Luana Alexandra Radu, were issued their first preventive arrest warrants on the 30th of December 2022, after being detained by the DIICOT prosecutors the day before, following searches of their villa in Pipera and their videochat studio.

On 20 January, at the request of the prosecutors, the Bucharest Court  extended their preventive arrest warrants for another 30 days, from the 29th of January to the 27th of February. Although the decision is not final and has already been challenged by the Tate brothers’ lawyers, they remain in custody at least until the 28 of January, 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 the 29th of January.

The 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 they were released from custody.  In this context, DIICOT prosecutors made use of an earlier statement by one of the two eccentric millionaires, in which he indicated that he had accounts in 19 countries around the world and could fly using several passports.

”If I am wrong and England wants me in prison, I can fly with a Nigerian or American passport, or English, or Polish, or Estonian. I have bank accounts in 19 countries”, the prosecutors quoted in the report of one of the Tate brothers.

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 charged with „establishing an organised 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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