The former environmentalist secretary of state Jean-Vincent Placé, in police custody since Monday after the complaint in November from a former collaborator who accuses him of sexual assault and sexual harassment, must be presented this Tuesday at the end of afternoon to an investigating judge, said a judicial source.
The Paris prosecutor’s office on Tuesday opened a judicial investigation “of the counts of sexual assault and sexual harassment by a person abusing the authority conferred by his function” as well as for “sexual assault”, said this source. The complainant, as well as former collaborators of elected environmentalists, have since the opening of the investigation been heard by the investigators, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The former elected official had been placed in police custody on Monday at the premises of the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP), as part of an investigation opened by the prosecution, after the complaint of Audrey *, ex-collaborator who had followed him from the Senate to the State Secretariat for Reform and Simplification.
Facts taking place between 2012 and 2016
Audrey* had filed a complaint in November 2021, accusing Jean-Vincent Placé, 54, of acts of sexual harassment between 2012 and 2016. Some of the facts she denounced were also akin to sexual assault: the collaborator accused him in particular to have “touched his buttocks”, in August 2015 in Lille, on the sidelines of the summer gathering of Europe Ecology the Greens (EELV).
The second attack would have occurred in mid-May 2016 in Seoul (South Korea), during an official trip by Jean-Vincent Placé: in a car, the former secretary of state of François Hollande would have “touched deliberately Audrey’s chest”.
Contacted at the time of the opening of the investigation, Jean-Vincent Placé had not commented. “I will, of course, answer any questions that may be asked of me by the investigators,” he added. His lawyer, Maître Lisa Janaszewicz, told AFP on Tuesday noon that she had “no statement to make”.
Already sentenced in 2021 for similar facts
In March 2021, Jean-Vincent Placé was fined for sexual harassment of a gendarme responsible for his security.
In September 2018, he was also given a three-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 1,000 euros for violence and insults during a party where he admitted having been “extremely insistent” and “moved” with a client.