What definitions and categories do German federal and state authorities use when reporting investigations versus prosecutions for document forgery?
Executive summary
German authorities treat "document forgery" as a broad criminal concept that criminalizes creating, altering or using falsified documents with intent to deceive; anyone who uses a forged document can be liable under §267 StGB (as described by a German criminal-defence practice guide) [1]. Investigations are typically led by police and specialist federal or state forensic units (with centralised tools like the BKA’s ISU), while prosecutions are taken forward by the public prosecutor’s offices at state level in ordinary cases and only by the Federal Public Prosecutor (Generalbundesanwalt) in narrow national-security or federal matters — a division that shapes how cases are counted and reported [2] [3] [4].
1. What counts as "forgery" — a functional, wide net
German practice treats a wide variety of items as "documents" for forgery purposes: from vehicle plates and TÜV stickers to forms and stamps, and even technical records where data manipulation creates probative falsehoods — the Criminal Code and specialist cyber/criminal commentary extend forgery to "technical records" under secs. 268–269 StGB [1] [3]. Legal-advice and cyberlaw sources emphasize that liability turns on making a document accessible to deceive a recipient (presentation, hand‑over or deposit), not on whether the recipient actually relied on it [1].
2. Who investigates — police, state offices, and specialist federal units
Investigations are commonly initiated and led by state police and public prosecutor offices, supported by specialist examiners in federal and state criminal police offices; the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) aggregates forensic reference material and supports examinations through the ISU database used across border controls, police, and forensic labs [2]. Cyber and business‑crime reporting notes that if conduct might be criminal the public prosecutor usually leads the probe "using the aid of other authorities," and various agencies (tax/customs, BaFin for financial matters) can investigate administrative or related offences before or in parallel with criminal proceedings [3] [4].
3. How "investigations" are categorised in reporting — operational, forensic, and inter‑agency
Official reporting tends to categorise investigations by the lead authority and operational footprint — e.g., federal police raids or cross‑border actions supported by Europol are flagged as federal police operations, while forensic-characteristics work (identifying document types and forgery techniques) is documented by BKA units and shared via ISU to all examiners [5] [2]. This means public statements about "investigations" can refer to distinct activities: criminal investigations by prosecutors/police, specialist forensic analyses, or administrative inquiries by agencies with sectoral competence [2] [4].
4. Who prosecutes — state public prosecutors, with limited federal intervention
As a rule, ordinary document‑forgery prosecutions are conducted by state-level public prosecutors and tried in state courts; there is no general federal prosecutorial competence for business crime — the Federal Public Prosecutor intervenes only for offenses implicating national security or other federal exceptions [4]. Administrative offences that overlap with forgery-related conduct (e.g., certain BaFin or customs violations) remain with specialised agencies unless prosecutors assume the case [4].
5. What "prosecution" statistics and labels hide — jurisdictional and definitional frictions
Because multiple authorities investigate, and because administrative, cyber/data‑forgery (secs. 268–269) and classic §267 offences can overlap, headline counts of "investigations" versus "prosecutions" will reflect jurisdictional choices (which office took charge), forensic classification (physical forgery vs. forged data), and prosecutorial thresholds; press summaries of large raids (e.g., Europol‑backed operations) report arrests and searches but do not equate to convictions and are shaped by which body reported the action [5] [2] [3]. Legal-practice materials warn that being subject to a criminal investigation is common when authorities "suspect" forgery, but they also stress the procedural step from investigation to indictment is governed by prosecutorial discretion [1] [6].
6. Bottom line and reporting caveats
In short, German reporting distinguishes investigations (police/prosecutor-led inquiries, forensic examinations, agency probes) from prosecutions (formal charging and court proceedings mostly at the state level), with specialised federal roles limited to support (BKA’s ISU, Europol cooperation) or exceptional prosecution by the Generalbundesanwalt; understanding any statistic therefore requires asking which authority led the probe, which legal provision (§267 vs secs. 268–269) was applied, and whether the matter was treated as administrative, criminal, or cross‑border — existing sources document the structures and tools but do not provide a single unified public taxonomy for every published statistic [1] [2] [3] [4].