What is the offence of false documentation?

Have you ever thought about altering the content of a document because you think it might help you or that you could benefit from it?

Be very careful because by altering a document, whether public or private, you would be committing a document fraud offence and could face serious criminal consequences.

What does the offence of false documentation consist of? 

According to the wording of our current Penal Code, the crime of false documentation is committed by altering, modifying, simulating or falsifying a complete document or part of it, adulterating its components, or even creating a new document from another.

That is, you can commit this offence when you modify the information in a document so that the new file is based on a falsehood, if you change relevant data in a document (such as, for example, a person's date of birth or personal identification), or by making a false copy of a document with the intention of lying to a third party.

Which documents are included in this type of offence?

But is the alteration of any type of document a criminal offence? In this respect, we should refer to the concept of document for criminal purposes, set out in Article 26 of the Criminal Code, which defines it as any material support that expresses or contains data or facts with evidential value, or any other type of legal relevance.

In this sense, we can speak of any public document, understood as such in accordance with the Civil Code as documents authorised by a notary or competent public workers; official documents issued by civil servants in the exercise of their functions; and even private documents.

The code therefore distinguishes between three types of forgery of documents: forgery of public, official and commercial documents (section 1); forgery of private documents (section 2); forgery of certificates (section 3); and forgery of credit and debit cards and other payment instruments (section 4).

The legal interest protected in documentary forgery: 

Through the criminalisation of this offence, the aim is to protect public faith and the security of legal traffic, as well as to maintain the confidence of citizens in the content and veracity of documents that have evidentiary capacity. For this reason, the rewards for committing this offence can be considerable, as we point out below.

What are the penalties for document forgery offences?

Depending on the type of offence in question, the Criminal Code provides for different types of punishment. In the case of the basic type, the falsification of public documents can lead to prison sentences of between 3 and 6 years, a fine of 6 to 24 months, and special disqualification of 2 to 6 years.

In the case of a private document, prison sentences can range from 6 months to 2 years.

As for the falsification of certificates, depending on who commits the offence, if it is committed by a medical practitioner, the penalty will be a fine of 3 to 12 months, while if it is committed by an authority or public official, it will be punished with a suspension sentence of 6 months to 2 years.

If we are dealing with the counterfeiting of payment instruments, Article 399 bis of the Criminal Code provides for different types of punishment depending on the specific action carried out, with sentences of up to 8 years' imprisonment. If the forgery is committed by a criminal organisation or involves a group of persons, the penalty will be imposed in the upper half of the sentence.

In summary, the offence of forgery can be committed by any person, whether a private individual, public official, medical practitioner in the exercise of their duties, etc.; and the criminal consequences of its commission can be quite high. If you are affected by this situation, contact us.