Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 49

Summary: - The offence of forgery of official papers. Its establishment. - Criminal intent in forgery is established by the perpetrator’s deliberate alteration of the truth in the document with the intention of using it for the purpose for which it was forged. The challenged judgment need not discuss the elements of the offence expressly and separately. The reason. - An individual declaration that is not punishable is a statement issued by one party, other than the competent official, and amounts merely to information that may be true or false. The reason: it concerns a personal matter of the declarant, and the falsehood it contains relates to the declarant’s personal status, involves no usurpation of another person’s capacity or right, and cannot constitute an instrument enforceable against others. - The appellant’s provision of information—contrary to the truth—during his questioning, by dictation to the competent investigator, for recording in the identification form he submitted to the Executive Committee for Illegal Residents to examine whether he met the eligibility requirements for obtaining Kuwaiti nationality, followed by the remaining procedures being taken on the basis of that information, establishes the offence of forgery of official papers. - The legislature added two articles to Decree No. 15 of 1959 concerning the Kuwaiti Nationality Law to criminalize providing incorrect information to the administrative authorities competent to investigate Kuwaiti nationality or the committees formed for that purpose. The reason: recognition of the importance of information a person provides to obtain Kuwaiti nationality for himself or another, and concern that such information always be correct given its materiality and ensuing effects. The effect: merely providing incorrect information, with knowledge thereof, to the administrative authorities competent to investigate Kuwaiti nationality or the committees formed for that purpose makes the provider a perpetrator of an offence treated as forgery of official documents and subject to an equivalent penalty. Rule: It is established that forgery of an official document is constituted merely by altering the truth in the document by one of the means prescribed by law, where the alteration is capable of creating the belief that it conforms to the truth and is made with the intention of using the document for the purpose for which the truth was altered. Criminal intent in this offence is established by the perpetrator’s deliberate alteration of the truth in the official document with the intention of using it for the purpose for which it was forged. The judgment need not discuss expressly and separately the element of criminal intent or the other elements of the offence, provided its reasoning contains what demonstrates their existence. It is also established that an individual declaration that is not punishable is a statement issued by one party, other than a competent official, and amounts merely to information that may be true or false because it concerns a personal matter of the declarant. The falsehood it contains relates to the declarant’s personal status, involves no usurpation of another person’s capacity or right, and cannot be regarded as an instrument enforceable against others. That being so, the incident, as established by the challenged judgment—as previously explained—was that the appellant, while being questioned about the information he had entered in the identification form submitted to the Executive Committee for Illegal Residents to examine whether he met the eligibility requirements for obtaining Kuwaiti nationality when applying for it, deliberately dictated to the competent investigator—contrary to the truth—that his wife was .................. and that she was the mother of his son .... and his daughter ....... . The investigator recorded this information in good faith in the investigation record, and both the appellant and the investigator signed those statements. The remaining procedures were taken on the basis of that information, which the said record was prepared to establish and verify. This constitutes forgery of an official document as defined by law. The appellant’s contention that the forged information was not among the matters the investigation record was prepared to establish, or that the statement he made was merely an unpunishable individual declaration, is incorrect. Since the challenged judgment adopted this view, it complied with the law, and the appellant’s complaint in this regard is unsound. Furthermore, his argument that what he stated in the investigation record was an unpunishable individual declaration is of no avail. The legislature—as appears from the explanatory memorandum to Law No. 30 of 1970 adding two articles to Decree No. 15 of 1959 concerning the Kuwaiti Nationality Law—in recognition of the importance of information a person provides to obtain Kuwaiti nationality for himself or another, and out of concern that it always be correct given its materiality and ensuing effects, deemed—contrary to the general rules—that a person who merely provides incorrect information to the administrative authorities competent to investigate Kuwaiti nationality or the committees formed for that purpose, including the Executive Committee for Illegal Residents, knowing it to be incorrect, commits an offence treated as forgery of official documents under the Penal Code. In the second paragraph of the added Article 21 bis B, the legislature prescribed imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years for the perpetrator of this act, to which a fine not exceeding five hundred dinars may be added—a penalty equivalent to that for forgery of an official document, of which the appellant was convicted.