Andrew Tate: Inside the Romanian town where brothers' empire began (2024)

The villa at the end of Strada Narciselor sits at the end of a perilous road, surrounded by the fir-covered peaks of the Carpathian Mountains.

Andrew Tate's first Romanian address is a far cry from the glitzy lifestyle he paraded in Bucharest before his detention - it's a squat, three-storey building with yellow walls, a short drive from the village of Sacele.

The long drive there from Bucharest winds through mile after mile of snow-muffled forest, branches iced thickly to their tips, mountains sloping towards the horizon - it's like driving through a Christmas card.

Outside Sacele, the icy track narrows to the width of a car as it climbs towards the villa, a sheer drop on one side.

No Ferraris here. A Dacia and a Skoda sit parked between slushy snowdrifts outside the building.

Inside it's divided into small functional apartments. This is where, in apartments 9 and 17, the Tate brothers began building their Romanian business empire.

Vasile Mezdrea, a local developer, sold them the properties "in 2015, or early 2016" for less than €35,000 ($37,900; £31,425) each.

"They paid in instalments because they didn't have the money to buy the flats outright," he told me. "They had no car in those days - they used to take their girlfriends out shopping in taxis."

He says that Andrew moved here with a British girlfriend, Melissa, who bought a third apartment in the same block.

But, according to locals, she wasn't the only woman living here with the brothers. Several people told us that other women were either living in their apartments or visiting regularly.

One, who didn't want to be named, said he had received complaints that naked women were clearly visible in the Tates' ground floor apartment.

Inside the block, there are few people who remember the Tates. And those who do are keen not to speak on the record.

"They were contemptuous, arrogant," one said. But "very discreet - there was no music, no fights".

She said their dog, a German Shepherd, was left loose to wander the building, at one point attacking one of the residents there, and leaving her with bruises.

Complaints to the brothers reportedly went unanswered.

Seven years on, the brothers are reportedly worth millions, with a Bucharest lifestyle of designer watches, private jets and an extensive property portfolio.

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In Sacele itself, with its post office, pizza restaurant and slot machines, the Tates are remembered most vividly for their recent return visits - their new flashy cars were unmissable.

Vasile Mezdrea says they moved to Romania because it "has beautiful women and it's cheaper to live".

But he says the brothers had ambitions beyond Sacele. "They always wanted more," he told me.

Sacele might seem like an unlikely place for the two young British kickboxers to start out, but it reveals a connection with two people who would go on to play key roles in their lives.

One is a businessman called Sebastian Vieru, who first brought the Tate brothers to Romania in 2014.

Originally from the Brasov region around Sacele, Mr Vieru flew them out several times to act as coaches and commentators for his cage-fighting shows.

It was Mr Vieru who told the Tates about Vasile Mezdrea's new apartment block outside Sarcele, advising them that the developer urgently needed funds to finish the building, and that they would get the apartments at a discount.

He says Andrew and Tristan Tate brought some money with them from the UK, but that their wealth grew quickly once in Romania.

Tracing that wealth - how it was made and where it came from - is believed to form part of the investigation into rape and human trafficking allegations currently being carried out by Romania's organised crime unit.

The properties in Sacele seem to have made them very little. They sold them a couple of years later, when they moved to Bucharest, for just a few thousand euros' profit.

But they left this mountain hideaway with a new business: Talisman Enterprises makes its money from web portals, according to official Romanian records. It hasn't posted a profit since 2017.

Sebastien Vieru says he acts as a financial executor for the company, which is registered to an address 15 kilometres from Sacele, owned until recently by Mr Vieru's parents.

He also has a 10% stake in a real-estate company called War Room Vegas, also registered to the same address, and part-owned by Andrew Tate.

The other is Andrew's girlfriend, Georgiana Naghel, a former employee in Mr Vieru's cage-fighting business.

In August last year, according to official Romanian records, both Andrew and Tristan transferred all their shares in Talisman Enterprises, as well as its administration, to her.

The transfer of the company to Ms Naghel, a Romanian national, came four months after police began investigating the brothers. There is no evidence the two actions are linked.

Talisman Enterprises is also associated with another company that lists Ms Naghel as the sole shareholder, administrator and beneficiary; a management consultancy called New Era Learning, that was established in August 2022.

There are no financial records listed for the company.

A third company, a consulting firm called Groundbreaking Developments, was also transferred to Ms Naghel in August. In October, it was sold on to another company owned by Abigail Tyson, believed to be a close associate of the Tate brothers.

Ms Naghel is now being held in preventative custody along with the Tate brothers and another Romanian national, Luana Radu. No charges have yet been brought against any of them.

In the past few weeks, investigators have seized a wide range of assets belonging to the four suspects, including Talisman Enterprises.

They have also raided a long list of properties belonging to the brothers, including a swathe of land in Brasov county, and houses in and around Bucharest.

Designer watches have been seized, and the brothers' fleet of luxury cars removed from their warehouse-style compound on the outskirts of the capital.

Observers believe that much of the Tates' wealth may come from their investments in a major chain of Romanian casinos, and their online training courses in Andrew Tate's rigid model of masculinity.

The investigation could well answer questions about how the pair moved from their cheap flat in the mountains to the world of Bugattis, cigars and private planes posted their on social media accounts.