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Andrew Tate said for years that he moved to Romania because he believed the country to be corrupt.
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His Romanian lawyers said he’s since changed his tune following his arrest in the country.
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Tate is currently being investigated on suspicion of human trafficking. He has denied the allegations.
Self-identified misogynist online influencer and former kickboxer Andrew Tate, who is currently under house arrest following his detention in Romania, has apparently changed his views on Romania as a haven for corruption.
Tate’s lawyer Eugen Vidineac told The New York Times that Tate had “stopped thinking about Romania being so corrupt” following his arrest there.
His lawyer’s statement is a pivot from Tate’s previous assertions on lawlessness in the Eastern European country.
Tate, who is being investigated on suspicion of human trafficking along with his brother Tristan and their two associates, Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu, moved to Romania in 2017. (Several sexual assault allegations against him surfaced while he lived in the UK, which he has denied.)
He and his brother were arrested in December and are being held under house arrest pending trial. They have denied the allegations.
After his move to Romania, Tate consistently mused online about his supposedly newfound freedom in Romania.
“I’m not a fucking rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free,” Tate once said in a video that was later removed from his YouTube channel, Insider previously reported.
Tate also once said that he believed “corruption is far more accessible” in Eastern Europe.
This is not the first time his lawyer has backtracked on his client’s own statements — Vidineac previously distanced himself from statements made by Tate claiming that his arrest and investigation were tied to a shadowy, but vague, conspiracy to silence him.
“I have a serious profession and I didn’t ask my client about this Matrix story because I think it is about something on media platforms or internet platforms,” Vidineac told Turkish public broadcaster TRT World in January.
A Romanian lawyer previously told Insider’s Lindsay Dodgson that Tate’s controversial statements online, along with those of his brother and associates, could make it much more difficult for lawyers to defend them.
“The problems are themselves,” attorney Stefan Loredan said. “It’s mainly because they’ve been incriminating themselves through the social-media content that they’ve been creating in the last two to three years.”
A representative for Tate did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Read the original article on Insider
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