Forgery of documents, Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - punishment for forgery

What is considered falsification of documents?
What signs characterize this crime? What articles does falsification of documents fall under? What preventive measure can be established for this crime? Dear readers! To solve your specific problem, call the hotline or visit the website. It's free.
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According to the law, falsification or forgery refers to forgery, changing the appearance and/or properties of documents, things or evidence. Criminal liability is provided for these acts Let's look at the details of document falsification.

Main signs of document falsification

Crimes related to falsification of documents are characterized by four characteristics:

1. Production of false government documents to obtain rights (advantages, benefits) or exemption from them.
2. Forgery involves changing the data (information) specified in the original document by making corrections or in another way.
3. Sales is the sale of deliberately forged documents. Please note that if the recipient is misled about the authenticity of the document, then the actions of the criminal will be classified under two articles: falsification of documents and fraud.
4. Use of knowingly forged documents.

The main characteristic of the crime is the use of a forged document or the intention to do so.

If a citizen falsifies documents not for the purpose of obtaining benefits (rights, benefits) or exemption from them, then his actions will not constitute a crime.

Ways and methods of falsification

Identifying fabricated evidence is the most difficult exercise. Here it is necessary to take into account not only the methods, but also the methods of obtaining such “facts”.

Violations in the preparation of evidence may be as follows:

1. Forgery of documents by entering false information about the participants in the crime, the evidence found, the location of the investigation, etc.
2. Complete or partial destruction of documents of interest to the investigation.
3. Violation of procedural deadlines regarding amendments to evidence in a criminal case.
4. All kinds of forgeries and forgeries of signatures of officials responsible for investigating the crime.
5. Material violations of an intentional nature (printing of fingerprints, blood stains, planting of murder weapons, etc.).
6. Drawing up deliberately false documentation, for example, a protocol for a search of a suspect’s apartment.
7. Intentional alteration or withdrawal of witness testimony for the purpose of further prosecution according to a proven scheme.

Falsified evidence is a gross violation of criminal enforcement proceedings. Fabricated evidence goes into the prosecutor's conviction and then into the court case. That is why it is so important to report violations in a timely manner, because otherwise there is a high risk of receiving a real sentence.

Legislative acts

According to the law, falsification of documents combines a number of criminal acts, the essence of which is the forgery of official papers or any other types of physical media. According to the Criminal Code (CC) of Russia, this crime falls under several articles. The main ones are:

• Article 327 of the Criminal Code of Russia on the forgery, production or sale of illegal documents, including awards and award documents, stamps, forms and seals;
• Article 187 of the Criminal Code of Russia on the production or sale of payment documentation and bank cards;
• Article 186 of the Criminal Code of Russia on the manufacture or sale of counterfeit securities and money;
• Article 233 of the Criminal Code of Russia on the forgery of prescription forms or other documents allowing one to receive or purchase narcotic or drug-containing drugs and psychotropic drugs;
• Article 303 of the Russian Criminal Code on falsification of evidence;
• Article 142 of the Russian Criminal Code on forgery of documents during election campaigns and referendums;
• Article 292 of the Russian Criminal Code on official forgery.

As stated above, these are only the main articles regulating liability for falsification of documents. Depending on the crime, a court decision can be made on the basis of more than 20 articles of the Criminal Code of Russia.

In some cases, falsification of documents is the main means to achieve criminal goals, while in others it is only a secondary feature. However, there is a common circumstance that unites all these crimes - a forged document allows the criminal to obtain property or other types of rights or be released from any obligations.

Responsibility for falsification of documents

Responsibility for a crime can be established under several articles of the Criminal Code of Russia, depending on the corpus delicti, but only under one point of the part of the article under which it is qualified.

٭May be accompanied by deprivation of rights to occupy certain positions.

Is the norm of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on falsification of evidence applicable to a defense lawyer?

On April 21, three court hearings were held in the Basmanny District Court, at which the decisions to conduct searches in the lawyer’s office and in the apartment of lawyer Alexander Lebedev, against whom a criminal case is being investigated on charges of falsifying evidence, were reconsidered.

In the fall of 2021, Alexander Lebedev accepted an assignment to defend Ekaterina Krasnikhina, accused in a criminal case of embezzlement, in which the son of the Prosecutor General of Russia, lawyer Artem Chaika, was recognized as the victim. In September, the woman's preventive measure was changed from a recognizance not to leave the place to house arrest, with a ban on leaving her place of residence without the permission of the preliminary investigation body.

In October, the investigator granted the petition of the accused and her defense lawyer, who asked for permission to visit the medical perinatal center with her newborn child. The investigator allowed the woman to leave home for four hours on October 12, from 8:00 to 12:00. However, Ekaterina Krasnikhina did not return home in a timely manner, being almost 2 hours late, which gave the investigator reason to petition the court to change the preventive measure to detention.

The court agreed with the investigators' arguments about a violation of the chosen preventive measure, expressed in the fact that Ekaterina Krasnikhina was in an unknown place for 2 hours in the afternoon of October 12, and issued a decision to take the woman into custody. However, after 4 days the judicial act was canceled as unjust, and Krasnikhina returned home.

Quite unexpectedly, more than a month after this, a criminal case was opened against Alexander Lebedev, and on December 15 he was brought in as a defendant. The lawyer was accused of presenting to the court as evidence a deliberately forged certificate of Krasnikhina’s visit to the medical perinatal center, which was added to the case file.

Thus, according to the investigation, Alexander Lebedev committed a crime under Part 3 of Art. 303 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - falsification of evidence in a criminal case of a serious crime. As confirmation of this, the investigation, in particular, cited the testimony of a pediatrician who wrote out a certificate about Ekaterina Krasnikhina’s stay in the perinatal center on October 12. The doctor said that in fact the certificate was issued a few days after this at the request of Krasnikhina, who misled her.

The investigation considered that Alexander Lebedev reliably knew that his client had not visited a medical institution, and, by presenting the certificate, pursued the goal of the court making an illegal decision on the basis of false evidence to refuse to satisfy the investigator’s request to change the preventive measure against Ekaterina Krasnikhina.

After the charges were filed, searches were carried out in the lawyer’s work and living quarters.

Initially, Lebedev’s defense was carried out by the lawyer of the Kaluga Region Administration, Alexander Redkin, and at the end of January 2021, Henry Reznik entered the case as a defense attorney. He explained that he entered into the case precisely as the vice-president of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers and as the chairman of the FPA Council Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Lawyers, because the FPA considers the situation with Alexander Lebedev as an artificial creation of a case against a lawyer, as a challenge to the entire legal profession and almost like a declaration of war on her. “Because this actually destroys the foundations of our profession - the trusting relationship between lawyer and client,” he explained.

Having entered into the case, Henry Reznik immediately submitted a petition to the investigator to terminate the criminal case against lawyer Lebedev, indicating that he was brought to criminal liability illegally and unreasonably. However, the investigator refused to satisfy the request, and then his boss also refused to satisfy the complaint.

However, in the future, Alexander Lebedev’s defense managed to obtain in the Moscow City Court the cancellation of court decisions authorizing searches of the lawyer - the cases were sent for a new trial to the Basmanny District Court of Moscow. At the same time, the appellate instance indicated that during the re-examination of the first instance, the issue of the legality of initiating a criminal case should be resolved.

“I must say that this has not often occurred in my practice,” Henry Reznik commented to “AG”. “Maybe there were such cases, but it was within the framework of the investigation of the case itself, and not when considering the issue of the legality of the searches.”

At the same time, as the vice-president of the FPA noted, the Moscow City Court did not indicate what exactly the illegality of initiating the case was. According to Henry Reznik, the illegality of incitement can be associated with two aspects - formal and substantive.

“The formal point is, for example, that the case was initiated by an improper entity. In this case, this is the head of one of the seven departments of the Investigative Committee, whereas, according to Art. 448 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, a case must be initiated against a lawyer by the head of the investigative body of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the constituent entity of the Russian Federation. However, the Moscow City Court has already formed a position on this issue and recognizes this procedure for initiating criminal cases against lawyers as legal with reference to the internal order of the chairman of the Investigative Committee,” said Henry Reznik.

Thus, in his opinion, the Moscow City Court had in mind the substantive point, pointing out the insufficiency of data indicating signs of a crime. “In the petition to terminate the criminal case, we indicated that there were several grounds preventing its initiation. Firstly, Art. 303 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on falsification of evidence is not applicable to a lawyer in principle, because the lawyer does not collect any evidence in the procedural sense!” – emphasized the vice-president of the FPA.

Henry Reznik explained that in the procedural sense, evidence is collected and formed only by persons responsible for conducting the process at specific stages of legal proceedings - the inquiry officer, investigator, prosecutor and judge. And in relation to other participants in the process, including the defense lawyer, this term is used purely technically, since otherwise the Code of Criminal Procedure would have to write entire phrases each time about documents and information that may have evidentiary value.

He also noted that already in the very first commentary to the Code of Criminal Procedure, published in 2004 under the editorship of Elena Mizulina, who then headed the State Duma working group for the development of the Code, and Dmitry Kozak, at that time the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, who oversaw this area, there was It is clarified that in a strict procedural sense, only authorized entities who act in strictly defined procedural forms collect, check and evaluate evidence. And therefore, the lawyer is unable to give the information he collects the property of admissibility.

“Evidence, as the RF Supreme Court has repeatedly explained, is the unity of two properties: admissibility and relevance,” recalled the FPA vice-president. He also noted that the ill-fated certificate is doubly irrelevant, since when the court considered the investigator’s petition to change the preventive measure for Ekaterina Krasnikhina, it did not appear as evidence at all. And the decision to take her into custody lasted only 4 days, after which it was over,” Henry Reznik emphasized.