Controversial social media personality and former kickboxer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested by Romanian authorities on Thursday on charges of human trafficking and rape.
Tate's arrest comes a day after he had a Twitter spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg after he flaunted the emissions of the 33 supercars he owns. Thunberg's response to Tate made headlines with Twitter users criticising Tate for bullying a teenager.
Tate has been a controversial figure, who is known to target women and promote misogyny through his online content.
In light of the action by Romanian authorities, here's a look at why Tate and his brother were arrested and how he shot to fame.
What are the charges against Tate?
Romanian prosecutors said they arrested the Tate brothers and two others over human trafficking and charges of rape.
Reuters quoted the prosecutors as saying, "The four suspects ... appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost."
According to the report, the prosecutors have said that Tate would have made monetary gains for his actions.
Reports suggest that Tate had formed a group to carry out criminal activities.
The Guardian reported that the Romanian authorities found at least six women who had been sexually exploited by the arrested accused.
Reports said that their home was also raided in Bucharest.
The problem with Andrew Tate
Tate rose to fame in 2016 when he featured on British reality TV show Big Brother, but was later removed. The New York Times said that this happened after the British tabloid, The Sun, showed the producers of the show a video of him hitting a woman with a belt.
At the time the producers at Channel 5 were reported by the BBC as saying he was not removed because of his actions on the show, but because of "information which came to light" on the day he was removed.
Tate claimed that the act was consensual and that he remained to be friends with the woman in question in the video.
Tate faced bans from several social media sites because of his problematic views on women. In 2017 Tate was permanently banned from Twitter for saying women needed to bear responsibility for rape. Tate's account was reinstated along with Donald Trump, Kanye West and others when Elon Musk took over as the CEO of Twitter.
Earlier this year, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook removed Tate's accounts because of his problematic views on women and mental health. After the ban from Facebook and Instagram in August, Tate told The Guardian, "Internet sensationalism has purported the idea that im [sic] anti women when nothing could be further from the truth."
After TikTok banned Tate, a spokesperson from social media company was quote by The New York Times as saying, "Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok… Our investigation into this content is ongoing, as we continue to remove violative accounts and videos and pursue measures to strengthen our enforcement, including our detection models, against this type of content."
Tate has continued to defend his ideas in YouTube interviews. In a viral video, Tate said, "I am a realist. I am a realistic person. As a realist, in the modern world they're going to call you sexist, misogynist… but I am none of them."
However, Tate followed it up with another sexist remark saying, "If I were to get on a plane and that plane was to fly into the eye of a hurricane. There was a fifty percent chance of it crashing, I'd want a male pilot because males are better under stress and pressure."
Andrew Tate's showdown with Greta Thunberg
Since Tate's arrest came a day after his showdown with Thunberg, people on social media said it was because of a video that he released to reply to the climate activist that he was arrested.
In the video that he posted on Thursday, he was seen smoking a cigar as he replied to Thunberg. He is seen taking two boxes of Jerry's Pizza, a popular brand in Romania, while he speaks. Several reports said that it was the box of the pizza that gave away his location and helped the cops to zero in on his location.
Thunberg too made a cryptic remark over his arrest and said, "This is what happens when you don't recycle your pizza boxes."
A report in The Independent said that it was being "speculated" that his arrest could have not happened had he not posted the video in response to Thunberg's tweet. Several Twitter users made similar claims.
While the Romanian media did report that authorities were keeping an eye on Tate's social media accounts to keep track of his whereabouts, nowhere was it reported that it was the Thunberg tweet that led them to him.
In fact, Tate had posted a video of himself days earlier on December 25 with the caption that said "Romania", that signified he was in the country.
According to Romanian news publication Gandul, the police had been keeping an eye on the Tate brothers for months. The report said, "After seeing, including on social networks, that they were together in Romania, the DIICOT prosecutors mobilized the special troops of the Gendarmerie and descended, by force, at their villa in Pipera, but also at other addresses."
On Thursday after he boasted about his collection of high-end cars and the emissions they cause in a bid to take dig at the climate activist.
"Hello @GretaThunberg I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start. Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions. (sic)," he wrote.
Thunberg's one-line reply to his tweet won the internet. "yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com (sic)," she wrote.
By Friday evening, her reply had amassed 3.4 million tweets, replying to which he posted the video.
