THE Tate brothers have won the first step in their desperate bid to have £10million worth of seized assets returned to them.
Their assets include 15 luxury cars, 14 luxury watches, and 10 buildings and lands, all of which are located in and around Bucharest, Romania.
AFPAndrew and Tristan Tate have been charged as part of as ongoing sex trafficking investigation[/caption]
A previous decision to seize their assets was overturned on Monday by the Bucharest Court of Appeal, but they will have to return to court for the rest of the proceedings.
The brothers’ collection of watches include two Hublot, three Patek Philippe, one Cartier, three Audemars Piguet, one Akribos, two Rolex, one Ulysse Nardin, and one Breitling.
Cars including three Porsche, two BMW, two Ferrari, one Aston Martin, one McLaren, one Lamborghini, and five Mercedes were also seized by Romania‘s organised crime-busting police unit DIICOT on January 5 last year.
Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have both been charged as part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation.
DIICOT have been probing the brothers since arresting them in December 2022, at which time cops seized several buildings and two luxury homes owned by the Tate brothers in Voluntari.
One of the houses has eight bedrooms and spans 424 square metres, while the other has four bedrooms and spans 153 square metres.
If the Tate brothers are sentenced for the crimes they are accused of and don’t have the money to pay their alleged victims, their assets will be sold at auction, a judicial source previously told The Sun.
Andrew and Tristan are facing allegations of tracking and rape – all of which they strongly deny.
The assets seized from the Tates were estimated to be worth about £10million – including company investments worth £84,000 and 21 Bitcoin worth about £440,000.
It comes after Andrew and Tristan lost their bid to return to the UK to visit their sick mum after she suffered a heart attack.
The Tate brothers were arrested in December last year as part of a probe into human trafficking, rape, and organised crime.
They are accused of recruiting women on social media platforms and getting them to travel to their villa on the outskirts of Bucharest.
Both men are alleged to have pretended to fall in love with the women before getting them to work for their business and making them perform sexual acts on webcams.
Romanian authorities have reported that they have identified six alleged victims in the case who were subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion” as well as “sexual exploitation”.
Andrew has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying that he is a victim of something called The Matrix.
The Tate brothers and their alleged accomplices Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu were released on house arrest late last year.