Controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan must forfeit more than £2m after a judge ruled they failed to pay any tax on £21m in revenue from online businesses including OnlyFans.
Devon and Cornwall Police brought the civil case to seize £2.8m held in seven frozen bank accounts from the Tate brothers and a woman who can only be referred to as “J” for legal reasons.
Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring ruled in favour of the force in a judgment handed down at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today.
He said what appeared to be a “complex financial matrix” was actually a “straightforward cheat of the revenue”.
At an earlier hearing in July, Sarah Clarke KC, representing the force, described the Tate brothers, who are former kickboxers, as “serial tax and VAT evaders”.
They were said to have failed to pay a penny in tax on £21m of revenue from their online businesses including War Room, Hustlers’ University, Cobra Tate and OnlyFans between 2014 and 2022.
The court heard 38-year-old Andrew Tate‘s approach was “ignore, ignore, ignore because in the end they go away” and he said in a video posted online: “When I lived in England I refused to pay tax.”
Police said the brothers paid just under $12m (around £9.5m) into an account in J’s name and opened a second account in her name, even though she had no role in their businesses.
She received a payment of £805,000 into her Revolut account, the court heard, with £495,000 of that money paid to Andrew Tate, and £75,000 sent to an account in J’s name that was later converted to cryptocurrency, the court heard.
Martin Evans KC, representing the Tates, previously said the bank transfers made by the brothers were “entirely orthodox” for people who run online businesses and they did “a singularly bad job” if they had wanted to distance themselves from the money.
They spent money on a number of “exotic motor cars” but nothing illegal, he said.
The brothers are facing a series of separate, criminal allegations, including human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women in a case in Romania, while Andrew Tate is also accused of rape.
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A fleet of luxury cars was towed away from their home in the capital, Bucharest, earlier this year following more human trafficking charges. They deny all of the charges against them.
The Tates are currently barred from leaving Romania but are set to be extradited to the UK once those proceedings are concluded to face further allegations of rape and human trafficking dating back to 2012 to 2015, which they also 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.