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London:
UK police on Wednesday won a legal bid to seize more than £2 million ($2.5 million) from controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother to settle millions due in unpaid taxes.
A London court ruled in favour of police who had applied to seize the money from seven frozen bank accounts in a civil fraud case against the brothers.
The two men remain in Romania and Wednesday's ruling came before a hearing due in Bucharest on Thursday to decide whether Tate, a former professional kickboxer, and his brother, Tristan, can be tried on allegations of human trafficking and rape.
In the civil case at Westminster Magistrates court, police told the hearing the siblings had failed to pay any taxes on £21 million of revenue from their online businesses.
The case was lodged against them and a third person -- referred to only as "J" -- by Devon and Cornwall police in southwest England over the allegedly unpaid tax from earnings between 2014 and 2022.
In his judgment, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said what appeared to be a "complex financial matrix" was actually a "straightforward cheat" of UK tax authorities.
At an earlier hearing, lawyer Sarah Clarke, representing the police 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 was told that he said his plan was to "ignore, ignore, ignore because in the end they go away".
Clarke claimed the brothers had "a huge number of bank accounts" in the UK -- seven of which are now frozen -- and that money "washed around" them.
"That's what tax evasion looks like, that's what money laundering looks like," she said.
The money came from products they sold online as well as their OnlyFans subscription sites, the court was told.
Andrew Tate moved to Romania years ago after first starting a webcam business in the UK.
He later turned to social media platforms to promote his divisive views.
Giving tips on how to be successful, along with misogynistic and sometimes violent maxims, his videos have made him one of the world's best-known influencers.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
