Andrew Tate is accused of being "brazen" over tax evasion from online businesses including OnlyFans, a court has heard.

Controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been accused of failing to pay tax in any country on £21m of revenue from their online businesses earned between 2014 and 2022.

Devon and Cornwall Police are bringing a civil claim against the pair - and a third person referred to only as J - over unpaid tax, Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told on Monday.

The court was also told the brothers had “a huge number of bank accounts” in the UK, seven of which have been frozen.

The police force is seeking around £2.8m in seven frozen bank accounts.

Sarah Clarke KC, for Devon and Cornwall Police, said that money “washed around UK bank accounts” that were used “as a mechanism for moving revenues from their business activities through a wide number of accounts”.

“That’s what tax evasion looks like, that’s what money laundering looks like,” she told the court.

The money came from products they sold online as well as their OnlyFans sites, the court heard.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukOPEnglish
    16·
    5 months ago

    I think we’ll need a trial or two to connect all the dots but it presumably comes back to the Romanian charges of (to quote Wikipedia): “rape, human trafficking, and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women” as well as remaining “under investigation concerning money laundering and trafficking of minors”. From an earlier report:

    Reuters, reporting on the unpublished court documents, also said that prosecutors allege that Tate forced victims to perform on TikTok and OnlyFans pages he controlled, raping one of the women twice while seeking to enlist her.

    Tate was detained on December 29 in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, as part of an ongoing human trafficking and rape investigation.

    Romanian investigators said in a press release that at least six women were victims of a trafficking scheme, which involved the exploitation of women by forcing them to create pornographic content for paywalled websites.

    The press release specifically mentions the “loverboy method” — a known human trafficking technique where men seduce and manipulate women into sex work

    There are lots of positive stories from OnlyFans creators about his it helped them earn a living but there is likely to be a dark underbelly with people not being in control of their accounts and, potentially, not consenting to the content being uploaded. There’s been quite recent news about minors either uploading material to the site or an abuser doing it.