Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been ordered to forfeit more than £2million after losing a legal battle with police over their taxes.
The controversial brothers were branded “serial tax and VAT evaders” after being accused of failing to pay money owed from their online businesses between 2014 and 2022.
Devon and Cornwall Police brought a case to Westminster magistrates court, arguing tax is owed on £21million of revenue from their online businesses including War Room, Hustlers’ University, Cobra Tate and OnlyFans.
On Wednesday, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring ruled that police can seize money held in seven frozen bank accounts with ties to the brothers.
The judge said what appeared to be a “complex financial matrix” was actually a “straightforward cheat of the revenue”.
In July at an earlier hearing, Sarah Clarke KC, representing the force, referenced a video posted online by Andrew Tate, in which he said: “When I lived in England I refused to pay tax.”
The court heard he said his approach was “ignore, ignore, ignore because in the end they go away”.
The brothers are accused of paying just under $12million into an account in the name of a woman identified only as J, and opened a second account in her name, even though she had no role in their businesses.
Part of the £2.8million that Devon and Cornwall Police targeted is cryptocurrency held in an account in her name.
J received a payment of £805,000 into her Revolut account, the court heard.
Of this, £495,000 was paid to Andrew Tate, and £75,000 to an account in J’s name that was later converted to cryptocurrency, it is alleged.
Gary Pons, for J, argued that the funds in the Gemini account were in cryptocurrency and therefore could not be frozen at that time.
In the Tates’ defence, Martin Evans KC said that the bank transfers made by the brothers were “entirely orthodox” for people who run online businesses.
If they had wanted to distance themselves from the money, they did “a singularly bad job” because they moved it into accounts in their own names, he added.
The siblings spent money on a number of “exotic motor cars” but nothing illegal, he told the court.
The Tate brothers are currently facing a series of criminal allegations in Romania, and are set to be extradited to the UK once those proceedings are concluded to face further accusations here.
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.
The Tates deny the charges.
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 also deny.
Andrew Tate was formerly a Big Brother contestant in 2016, and has gone on to cultivate a substantial online following.
The former kickboxer describes himself as a “misogynist”, and has been banned from TikTok, YouTube and Facebook over claims of hate speech.
However he still has a following of almost 10 million on Elon Musk’s X.