Criminal liability for forgery, production or circulation of counterfeit documents, state awards, stamps, seals, forms: improvement of legislative regulation

Abstract

The article deals with the consideration of problematic issues of legal regulation of criminal liability for forgery, production and circulation of forged documents, state awards, stamps, seals, letterheads. The paper presents the analysis of the provisions of the criminal law, the statements of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the materials of judicial practice on the application of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The conducted research has revealed the shortcomings of legislative regulation of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the RF, including the unavailability of definitions of the concepts of “official document” and “forgery”; excessive enumeration of the types of official documents in Part 3 of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the RF; the use of the terms “forged” and “counterfeit” having identical meaning. The problem of differentiation of such subjects of crimes as “knowingly forged official document granting rights or releasing from duties” (part 3 of article 327 of the Criminal Code of the RF) and “knowingly forged document” (part 5 of article 327 of the Criminal Code of the RF) is noted; the question of legal regulation of responsibility for the considered crime committed in complicity is considered. The author makes some suggestions on improvement of legislative regulation of criminal liability for the crime provided by article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.