Police can seize more than £2 million from controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan after they failed to pay a penny in tax on £21 million of revenue from their online businesses, the chief magistrate has ruled.
Devon and Cornwall Police made a legal bid to seize the money, held in seven frozen bank accounts, from the Tates and a woman identified only as J.
In his judgment handed down at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said what appeared to be a “complex financial matrix” was actually a “straightforward cheat of the revenue”.
The court previously heard the brothers paid just under 12 million US dollars into an account in the name of J, and opened a second account in her name, even though she had no role in their businesses.
Part of the money the force applied to seize was cryptocurrency held in an account in J’s name.
J received a payment of £805,000 into her Revolut account, the court previously heard.
The proceedings are civil, which carries a lower standard of proof than criminal cases.
The Tates are facing a series of separate, criminal allegations in Romania, and are set to be extradited to the UK once those proceedings are concluded to face further accusations here.
They are accused of human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women in one case in Romania, in which Andrew Tate is also accused of rape.
A second more recent set of human trafficking charges saw a fleet of luxury cars towed away from their home in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
Bedfordshire Police secured an international arrest warrant for the brothers relating to allegations of rape and human trafficking dating back to 2012-2015, which they deny.
Andrew Tate has been banned from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook after the platforms accused him of posting hate speech and misogynistic comments, including that women should bear responsibility for being sexually assaulted.
But he remains popular on X, with almost 10 million followers, many of them young men and schoolchildren.
In July, senior police officers in the UK warned that influencers like Andrew Tate could radicalise social media followers into extreme misogyny in the same way that terrorists draw in their followers.
