Questions remain about why they were allowed to travel and what happens next with their legal cases.

Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, are dual US-UK citizens who claim to have made millions from their social media empire.

Their online output was controversial even before their legal troubles, with the pair attracting frequent criticism over offensive statements about women.

Police in the UK have linked Andrew Tate to the “quite terrifying” radicalisation of boys and young men in a 2024 report into violence against women and girls.

The brothers were first arrested in Romania in 2022. They are facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. Both brothers also deny the charges against them in the UK.

The brothers had been under a travel ban in Romania for more than two years while they were under investigation.

Speculation that they would leave Romania had been mounting ahead of their journey, after the pair went quiet on social media.

They left from a Bucharest airport at around 03:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on a private jet bound for Florida, sources have told the BBC.

Prosecutors said the travel ban had been lifted, and the pair’s US passports had been returned to them, but investigations into their alleged crimes have not been dropped.

The Tates have a large US following and are popular figures on the American right.

Earlier in February, some of Andrew Tate’s alleged victims said they were “extremely concerned” by reports that US officials had asked for his travel restrictions to be relaxed.

It came after US special envoy Richard Grenell raised the Tate brothers with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference.

Hurezeanu said he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a “form of pressure”. Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident.

The Tates have been a vocal supporters of US President Donald Trump, while his close adviser, Elon Musk, restored Andrew Tate’s account on X after he bought the social media platform in 2022.

Andrew and Tristan Tate have not yet commented on their trip to the US, and neither has the Trump administration.

The cases against the Tate brothers in Romania are now being rewritten by prosecutors, who allowed them to leave the country on the condition that they return – possibly as early as the end of March.

The pair’s request to leave the country was accepted, prosecutors said, but their request for the charges against them to be dropped was rejected.

The brothers face a number of civic and criminal legal cases.

The pair were charged with human trafficking and rape along with two Romanian female suspects in June 2023. They deny the charges.

They face separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. Last year, a Romanian court ruled they could be extradited to the UK after their case in Romania concludes.

Separately, lawyers for four women who claim they were assaulted by the Tates said they were bringing a civil case against him at the High Court in the UK for “damages for injuries they suffered as a result”.

A representative for the Tate brothers said in response that they “unequivocally deny all allegations”.

A separate civil case in the UK, which the brothers are contesting, accuses the brothers and a third individual of being serial tax evaders.

Four women who allege they were sexually abused by Andrew Tate have said they are in “disbelief and feel re-traumatised” by news of him leaving Romania.

In a joint statement, the four said: “It is clear that he will now not face criminal prosecution for his alleged crimes in Romania; he will use it as an opportunity to harass further and intimidate witnesses and his accusers, and he will continue to spread his violent, misogynistic doctrine around the world.”

They also urged British authorities to “finally take action, do something about this terrifying unfolding situation and ensure he faces justice in the UK”.

Matthew Jury, a lawyer representing the four alleged victims, told the BBC the Trump administration was “interfering in due process” in Romania and the UK.

Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, left Bucharest on a private jet early on Thursday. Both deny the allegations against them.

Romanian prosecutors stressed the case against them had not been dropped and they would be expected to return, understood to be at the end of next month.

However, their decision has raised concern that they came under pressure from leading figures in the Trump administration, with one leading Romanian politician saying she was outraged.

The brothers are facing separate, unrelated charges in the UK over allegations of rape and human trafficking, which they also deny. A separate, civil case has been opened in the US.

Romanian reports said they were heading to Fort Lauderdale in Florida on a non-stop flight that would take 12 hours, however the Tates’ lawyer in Bucharest denied to the BBC that was their destination.

The Tate brothers were first arrested in Romania in December 2022. The elder of the two, a former kickboxer who appeared on UK TV show Big Brother, was later accused of rape and human trafficking while his brother was suspected of human trafficking.

They both denied those charges and spent several months under house arrest. A year later, in August 2024, they faced new allegations including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons.

Andrew Tate is a self-described misogynist who has attracted millions of followers online, despite being previously banned from social media platforms for expressing his views.

He moved from the UK to Romania several years ago, however police in Bedfordshire are still seeking his extradition on separate and unrelated allegations of rape and human trafficking, as well as tax evasion.

Thursday’s decision by Romanian prosecutors to lift the ban on the Tates leaving the country is believed to have come in the wake of comments from figures in the Trump administration earlier this month.

The Tates have regularly posted messages in support of US President Donald Trump, and Tristan Tate has said his brother’s role in persuading “millions of young men” to back him “cannot be overlooked”.

Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told Romanian TV that Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, had brought up the issue of the Tate brothers during a conversation at the Munich Security Conference earlier in February.

Hurezeanu said his discussion with Trump’s envoy had only been an informal one and he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a “form of pressure”. Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident from his “publicly available tweets”.

Four British women have also taken out a civil case against Andrew Tate at the UK High Court, alleging that he raped and coercively controlled them. Tate denies their allegations.

They said it was clear he would not face criminal prosecution in Romania and appealed to UK authorities to take action.

“We are in disbelief and feel re-traumatised by the news that the Romanian authorities have given into pressure from the Trump administration to allow Andrew Tate to travel around Europe and to the US,” the women said in a statement.

Elena Lasconi, who is running for the Romanian presidency in May’s elections, six months after they were controversially cancelled, has called for the immediate resignation of the head of Romania’s organised crime investigations directorate DIICOT, which made the decision to let the brothers leave.

“I am outraged!” she wrote on social media, “as a woman, a human being and a Romanian.” Lasconi said prosecutors should explain publicly whether their decision came as a result of external pressure.

Prosecutors from DIICOT have emphasised that the judicial conditions for the brothers have not changed.

Any violation of those obligations made in bad faith “may lead to the replacement of judicial control with a higher measure of deprivation of liberty”, it said in a sta.tement in Romanian.

The Tates are understood to be required to return to Bucharest at the end of March to satisfy the prosecutors’ terms, however it is too early to say whether they will comply with them.

Romania is both a member of the European Union and a key Nato member state on the Western alliance’s eastern flank.

Senior Trump figures have also had the government in Bucharest in their sights over the court ruling that annulled last December’s presidential election. Romanian intelligence services said far-right candidate Calin Georgescu had been supported by a flurry of TikTok accounts engineered by Russia.

Georgescu was indicted on Wednesday for attempted “incitement to acts against the constitutional order”.