The Paris prosecutor’s office has requested that former French junior minister Jean-Vincent Placé be sent to trial on counts of sexual assault and sexual harassment. The requisition, filed with the investigating chamber of the Paris judicial court, follows a multi-year probe into allegations made by a former female aide who worked with Placé at the Senate and later at the Secretariat of State for State Reform and Simplification. According to the case file, Placé, now 57, is accused of groping the aide on several occasions. The alleged incidents include placing a hand on her thigh during a 2014 dinner, touching her buttocks at a party in August 2015 and grabbing her breast in a car after a 2016 evening in Seoul, South Korea. Prosecutors say the woman’s “precise and consistent” testimony is partly corroborated by one of two witnesses present during the Seoul incident. Placé served as a Green Party senator before joining former President François Hollande’s government in 2016. The investigating chamber will decide in the coming months whether to heed the prosecutor’s request and order a full trial. Placé has not publicly commented on the latest development.