Police can seize more than £2m from Tate brothers over unpaid tax claims

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”.

‘Attack’

Andrew Tate said in a statement that the ruling “is not justice” and claimed it was a “co-ordinated attack”.

The statement said: “First, they labelled me a human trafficker, yet they couldn’t find a single woman to stand against me.

“When that narrative crumbled, they turned to outright theft — freezing my accounts for more than two years and now seizing everything they could.

“This is not justice; it’s a co-ordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system.

“Speak against the Matrix, and they’ll come for your freedom, your reputation, and your livelihood.

“This raises serious questions about the lengths authorities will go to silence dissent.”

‘Deliberate conduct’

In his written ruling, the chief magistrate said: “I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that they have engaged in long-standing, deliberate conduct in order to evade their tax.”

He continued: “In my view, one need only focus on the inescapable evidential picture to determine the case.

“The money generated by the various business were online transactions which attracted VAT in the UK and / or corporation tax to the companies and / or income tax by the respondents, and they had not so much as registered to pay or account for tax, whether personal or otherwise, let alone paid any tax.

“That, I am satisfied, was precisely the intention of (the Tate brothers) and is unequivocally founded on the evidence before me.”

Cryptocurrency

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.

Police said the Tates failed to pay a penny in tax on £21 million of revenue from their online businesses including War Room, Hustlers’ University, Cobra Tate and OnlyFans between 2014 and 2022.

At an earlier hearing, Sarah Clarke KC, representing the force, quoted from a video posted online by Andrew Tate in which he said: “When I lived in England I refused to pay tax.”

The court previously heard he said his approach was “ignore, ignore, ignore because in the end they go away”.

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.

Human trafficking

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.