Prosecutors demanded a three-year prison term Monday for a former Foreign Ministry official accused of swindling the state out of about 21 million yen by padding limousine fees related to the 2000 Group of Eight summit in Okinawa.

In demanding the prison term for Hiromu Kobayashi, 46, former assistant director in the office of the deputy director general for general affairs at the Economic Affairs Bureau, prosecutors said that the public's trust in civil servants as a whole was greatly diminished by the incident.

The Tokyo District Court is scheduled to hand down its ruling May 28.