EXCLUSIVE VIDEO | Former DGPI intelligence officer targeted by prosecutors’ searches in the Tate brothers case. The man was guarding the two Britons with an army of mercenaries

A former officer of the General Directorate of Internal Protection (DGPI) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was targeted on Thursday in one of the seven raids that the DIICOT prosecutors carried out in the case in which brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate are accused of human trafficking and rape.

The man was in charge of guarding the two Brits and had hired an army of mercenaries to protect them.

DIICOT prosecutors raided seven addresses in Bucharest, Ilfov and Prahova on Thursday as part of the investigation opened against brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, accused, together with former policewoman Luana Alexandra Radu and Georgiana Naghel, of having trafficked several young women, whom they forced to work in a videochat studio set up by the two Britons in a villa in Pipera.

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According to sources close to the investigation, Vlad Obu, a former martial arts fighter who also owns a videochat studio in Voluntari, was among those targeted by the searches.

At the same time, the DIICOT prosecutors and police specialized in fighting organized crime also raided the address of Bogdan Stancu, a former DGPI executive who was in charge of organizing the security of brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate.

Judicial sources told Gândul that Bogdan Stancu had recruited a genuine army of mercenaries, made up exclusively of men with high military training, who had worked in the force structures of the Ministry of Interior and the Protection and Security Service (SPP).

In fact, Bogdan Stancu has never hidden the fact that he had worked for the DGPI, including on his Facebook page.

The Tate brothers feared being robbed by armed gangs.

Andrew and Tristan Tate were very concerned about the quality of their security services, as they were afraid of being attacked by violent Romanian or foreign gangs who would rob them in their own home, especially as they had a habit of displaying their wealth on social media sites, sources said.

According to GÂNDUL sources, DIICOT investigators are likely to extend the prosecution in the case against the two British millionaires.
Anti-Mafia prosecutors have raided the premises to collect new evidence in the case investigated for establishing a criminal group, rape, and human trafficking.

Tristan Tate’s girlfriend targeted by searches.

Tristan Tate’s girlfriend, with whom the Briton is said to have a child, was also targeted in Thursday’s raids, sources told GÂNDUL.

In order to convince the court that he should be released Tristan Tate told the judges that he and his girlfriend have a young child.

He failed to impress the court, and what’s more, his girlfriend has now also been searched in the case of the Brits’ business in Romania.

DIICOT prosecutors on the trail of the Tate brothers from April 2022

DIICOT carried out the first searches in this case on 11 April 2022, when several computers, laptops and equipment were seized from the Tate brothers’ Pipera home.

On the same day, other locations in Ilfov county were also targeted, and the searches took place after the US Embassy in Bucharest had notified the police that a young woman with American citizenship was being held by force in a villa owned by the two Britons.

She would have been lured to Romania by the famous „loverboy” method, used by many human traffickers, and later forced to video chat.

On 29 December 2022, the DIICOT prosecutors raided for the second time the Tate brothers’ villa in Pipera and the videochat studio they own, and several items of evidence were seized from the buildings searched at the time, including computers used in the videochat business, laptops with databases and money.

The Tate brothers are accused by the DIICOT prosecutors that, in 2021, they „established an organized criminal group with a view to committing the crime of human trafficking in Romania but also in other countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom”.

„They were then transported and housed in buildings located in Ilfov county where, through the exercise of physical violence and psychological coercion (through intimidation, constant surveillance, control and the invocation of alleged debts), they were sexually exploited by members of the group and being forced to engage in pornographic acts with a view to producing and disseminating material of that nature via social media platforms and by being forced to perform forced labour in order to gain substantial financial benefits consisting in sums of money obtained as a result of users accessing the material”, according the DIICOT.

Andrew and Tristan Tate, as well as the two Romanian women, have been in the custody of the Capital Police since December 29, 2022, when the prosecutors detained them, following searches, then the court issued 30-day pretrial arrest warrants on their behalf. They appealed the decision at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, which ruled that all four should remain in pre-trial detention.

Eugen Vidineac, the lawyer of the Tate brothers, stated, in an exclusive interview for Gândul (more details HERE) that the prosecutors of the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism have no evidence to support the charges brought against the two brothers and that the whole case is based only on the statement of one of the victims, a woman from Moldova.

The Tate brothers had their status changed from witnesses to suspects and from suspects to defendants on the evening of December 29, 2022, date by which they had the status of witnesses, so they would not be able to study the prosecution file.

The Britons were detained when the DIICOT prosecutor notified them of their status as defendants and issued a detention order, said lawyer Eugen Vidineac.

The extensive interview conducted exclusively by Gândul with lawyer Eugen Vidineac can be watched in full on YouTube.