Forgery, production or circulation of forged documents, state awards, stamps, seals or letterheads: problems of qualification and law enforcement

The article deals with the issues of qualification and enforcement of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: forgery, production and circulation of forged documents, state awards, stamps, seals or letterheads. At this stage of the development of criminal legislation, it is possible to trace the reform of the criminal law norm providing for liability for forgery. This trend is due to the object of attacks of a crime under article 327 of the criminal code, namely the importance of legal relations. Since documents play a huge role in all spheres of state, socio-political, economic and cultural life of society, they are a necessary element in the human rights and law enforcement activities of the state, a prerequisite for the normal functioning of government bodies. The administrative significance of official documents is quite serious, and the illegal use of powers in the field of document management is so socially dangerous that the state protects it with criminal legal means. The author has identified the following issues of law enforcement and qualification of article 327 of the criminal code: incorrect or ambiguous wording of the disposition of the article of the criminal code in the indictment of the Prosecutor, and the acquittal on the basis of absence of corpus delicti in connection with the discrepancy between the objective side of the disposition of the article. The author notes the imperfection of the conceptual and categorical apparatus, namely, the absence of the term official document as a note to Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which also complicates the application of the criminal norm on forgery. The long-term uncertainty in practice of the concept of an official document significantly complicates the protection against criminal encroachments, when the object or means of crime is such a document.