Answer
Article 171 of the Revised Penal Code punishes falsification committed by a public officer, employee, or notary who takes advantage of his official position, through any of eight modes: (1) counterfeiting or imitating a signature, handwriting, or rubric; (2) causing it to appear that persons took part in an act or proceeding when they did not; (3) attributing to persons statements other than those they actually made; (4) making untruthful statements in a narration of facts; (5) altering true dates; (6) making any alteration or intercalation that changes the meaning of a genuine document; (7) issuing an authenticated copy of a document that does not exist, or including a false statement in such a copy; and (8) intercalating any instrument or note in a protocol, registry, or official book.
The fourth mode — making untruthful statements in a narration of facts — requires that the offender had a legal obligation to disclose the truth of the facts narrated, that the facts are absolutely false, and that the perversion of truth was made with a wrongful intent to injure a third person. A private individual who commits any of these acts on a public, official, or commercial document is punished under Article 172.
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