Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 85

Summary: - The crime of forgery. Its establishment. - The bank’s provision to the account holder of a credit card and a personal identification number for withdrawing cash automatically from the bank’s machines designated for that purpose, or for paying for purchases from a shop using the bank’s point-of-sale devices, means that he personally, or someone he authorizes, is to perform this. The perpetrator’s unlawful appropriation of this card, obtaining it by any means, or counterfeiting it in imitation of a genuine one, and using it. Its effect: impersonating the account holder or his representative and dictating this false capacity to the device programmed by the bank, which receives it and records it in the account statement contrary to the truth. The material element of forgery of bank papers is thereby established. Rule: For forgery to be established, the alteration of the truth in the document must have been effected by one of the means exhaustively specified by law in Article 257 of the Penal Code, including dictating false particulars. The bank’s provision to the account holder of a credit card and a personal identification number for withdrawing cash automatically from the bank’s machines designated for that purpose, or for paying for his purchases from a shop using the bank’s point-of-sale devices, means that he personally, or someone he authorizes, is to perform this. If the perpetrator unlawfully appropriates this card, obtains it by any means, or counterfeits it in imitation of a genuine one, and uses it after obtaining the personal identification number to withdraw from point-of-sale devices to pay for his purchases or transactions with entities supplied by the bank with those devices, he thereby impersonates the account holder or his representative and dictates this false capacity to the device programmed by the bank. The device receives it and records it in the account statement contrary to the truth, namely that the account holder or his agent withdrew the amount requested or paid, from his account balance, for his purchases or transactions with others. This establishes the material element of forgery of banking papers.