Forgery of documents, arising responsibility under criminal law

ENThe article reveals the theoretical part of document falsification, analyses the essence and concept of document falsification as a criminal act, analyses the methods of document falsification and how they can be detected, and the dangerousness of the act of document falsification and its consequences. It examines how a pre-trial investigation is conducted in accordance with Article 300 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania and what criminal liability arises for forgery of documents. A quantitative study is conducted by conducting a questionnaire survey of prosecutors and assistant prosecutors in the regional prosecutor’s offices of the Panevėžys District Prosecutor’s Office, the Utena Prosecutor’s Office, revealing their concept of document forgery, how often it is encountered and what criminal liability is applied. The problem of the article – in judicial practice, conclusions can be found that any documents (private or official) can be forged if they contain information relevant to the emergence, change or termination of legal facts. In practice, there are cases when documents are signed with the permission of another person or documents are signed that do not have any legal force and this is already referred to as forgery of documents, but there are cases when the court of cassation states that the act is of minor importance or acquits the person (Forgery Laws…, 2023). This is not fundamentally a correct practice since the court of cassation must correct the errors of the first or appellate courts. The purpose of the article is to analyze the falsification of documents as a criminal act and the resulting criminal liability. The main problems. In court practice, conclusions can be found that any documents (private or official) can be forged if they contain information relevant to the emergence, change or termination of legal facts.In practice, there are cases when documents are signed with the permission of another person or documents are signed that do not have any legal force and this is already referred to as forgery of documents, but there are cases when the court of cassation states that the act is of minor importance or acquits the person. This is not fundamentally a correct practice, since the court of cassation must correct the errors of the first or appellate courts. Tasks of the article: 1) to examine the theoretical aspects of document forgery; 2) present methods of forging documents; 3) to analyze the legal norms arising in criminal liability for forgery of documents. The aim of the work. To analyze document falsification as a criminal act and the resulting criminal liability. The paper concluded the theoretical part of this work reveals the falsification of documents as a criminal act, methods of falsification, i.e. what liability arises in criminal law. The novelty. Documents perform an important task in the state, which convey various aspects of activities, and are also unavoidable in our daily life. In order to achieve selfish goals, or to try to hide mistakes, there is a need to falsify documents. The vagueness of the concept of a document has long encouraged researchers to be interested in the composition of document forgery (Forgery Laws…, 2023). However, today this topic is relevant not only because there is still no unequivocal and suitable for all cases document for the concept of Article 300 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, but also due to the fact that written documents are being replaced by electronic documents, the content of which is equivalent to written, paper documents. Society is changing and learning to use smart technologies, which encourages the emergence of new ways to authenticate documents.Documents, as a result of social relations, because they change accordingly with the changing needs of society, new ways of consolidating information appear. Court practice testifies that there is a greater need to analyze the content of a document in more detail, because it depends on whether it can be recognized as a document in a specific situation according to the meaning of Article 300 of the Civil Code. The outcome of the case depends on the correct interpretation of the content of the document. Therefore, forgery of documents is a hard-to-explain crime. As the result – It is very important to find out which crimes are related to forgery of documents and what criminal liability is applicable to them in criminal law. Forgery of documents is a crime, people do not reflect or accept it as a social norm. Forgery of documents is a negative collective social phenomenon, which causes negative repercussions in the social and political, state management, economic and international relations spheres. Methods: research methods used for the analysis of the scientific literature of the final thesis: analysis of scientific literature, analysis of judicial practice, analysis of legal acts, synthesis, comparison, integration. Keywords: falsification of documents, criminal law, criminal liability. [From the publication]