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Andrew Tate arrest casts light on Romania's sex cam boom

 

Ionut Iordachescu and Herve Bossy

Agence France-Presse/Bucharest

 

The arrest of controversial online influencer Andrew Tate for alleged rape and human trafficking in Romania has shone a spotlight on the country's burgeoning sex-cam industry.

Within a decade it has ballooned from a niche activity to one of the world's biggest purveyors of virtual sex, with an estimated 500 studios popping up across the poor Eastern European country.

But the industry fears the investigation into claims that Tate, a notorious misogynist, and his brother Tristan forced women into prostitution and sex-camming will tarnish their reputation.

Romanian sex-cam operaters told AFP that they had no idea that the British-American kickboxer, who claims to have made millions from sex-camming, had a studio until the "scandal" broke.

"The Tate brothers are not known in the industry and have never participated in industry events," said Maria Boroghina, a manager at Best Studios, one of Romania's biggest sex-cam operators.

A former camgirl herself, Boroghina is proud of her slick operation, which takes up a whole floor of a glitzy glass building in central Bucharest. 

"This job offers you the opportunity to earn big" from your early twenties, she said as young women in bathrobes stopped for coffee after several hours in front of the camera.

 

$8,000 a month

Boroghina said they had 160 women on their books. "The average monthly after-tax salary of our camgirls is US$8,000," about 10 times the average Romanian salary.

"Everything is transparent and legal," she added. "The girls work under contract and receive between 50 to 90 percent of the money" they make for the studio, she added.

Clients pay between $2 and $10 per minute "for a private conversation with the girls", who broadcast up to eight hours or more a day.

Romania's startling success in the sex-cam business has been driven by several factors, Boroghina argued.

"Romanian women are beautiful and smart, they speak very good English and we have good internet speeds," she told AFP. 

Even though the industry is legal, it is neither regulated under Romanian law nor recognized in terms of taxation, forcing the women to work as "online service providers" based on a copyright contract. 

While the Romanian industry insists that all is above board, Fabrizio Sarrica of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said "worldwide we have seen an increasing number of [trafficked] victims that have been recruited to work behind the camera.

"It's highly profitable" for criminals because a large number of "clients from all over the world" have access and the "images can be used multiple times, and sold on the darknet," he added.

But defenders of the industry like Boroghina and Ruxandra Tataru, an organizer of a sex-cam industry event called the Bucharest Summit, said they would welcome regulation.

Sexually explicit content "only represents 5 percent of the work", Boroghina insisted, saying Romanians cannot access Best Studios sex cams to protect the women's privacy.