What Article 179¹ is about
The market in precious metals and precious stones rests on the result of a test: a buyer trusts the report drawn up by an accredited testing laboratory, and the certificate issued on the strength of it. Article 179¹ of the Code of Administrative Offences penalises the abuse of exactly that trust — falsification of a test report by a testing laboratory (centre) accredited in the field of certification.
The text of the article attributes the act to the laboratory (centre) itself, and another market participant who relies on a falsified report is not its direct addressee. The article does not, however, set out how liability is divided between the organisation and any particular member of its staff; that cannot be read out of the text and has to be settled from the case file.
Note how narrowly the article defines who it is addressed to: it speaks of a testing laboratory (centre) accredited in the field of certification. That is a qualifying feature rather than description, so one thing worth checking is whether the organisation held precisely that accreditation when the disputed report was drawn up.
Report, certificate and assay
Three ideas need to be kept apart. The test report is the document in which the laboratory records the result. The certificate is issued for particular goods. The assay is the indicator that, in the case of precious metals, the falsified report is meant to falsify.
The sanction rests on all three links: the report is falsified, a certificate was issued for identified goods, and the sum paid for those goods becomes the basis on which the fine is calculated. If any one link is not established, the chain that produces the figure breaks — which is why each of the three is examined separately.
Two separate compositions
The article covers two distinct situations, each with its own sanction. What separates them is what the falsified report was meant to achieve.
- falsifying the report in order to falsify the assay of precious metals — a fine of ten times the sum paid for the goods for which the certificate was issued;
- falsifying the report in order to falsify precious stones — a fine of three times that same sum.
In neither case is the fine a fixed amount: it is calculated from the sum paid for the goods for which the certificate was issued. That sum is the central figure in the case, and usually the main thing the parties argue about.
How the fine is calculated
Because the sanction is built on a multiplier, the article does not contain the fine at all — it contains the calculation that produces it. Take the sum paid for the goods for which the certificate was issued; multiply it by ten where the assay of a precious metal was falsified, or by three where precious stones were concerned. The article supplies those two multipliers and nothing else: no sum of its own, no absolute floor, no absolute ceiling, and no figure that could be quoted as a typical penalty under this provision.
The whole amount therefore follows from a single number in the file, and establishing that base sum is where the argument concentrates: which payment is taken into account, which goods it is tied to, and whether a certificate was in fact issued for them. Financial documents matter as much as the testing documentation. The distance between the two multipliers matters as much again, because on one and the same base sum the precious-metal limb produces a fine more than three times the size of the precious-stone limb.
What tends to be in dispute
The article ties the falsification to a purpose: the report is falsified in order to falsify the assay of a precious metal or to falsify a precious stone. Disputes therefore run not only to the content of the report but to that purpose as well.
- whether the figures in the report differ from the actual test result;
- whether what happened is a technical inaccuracy or a falsification;
- which goods the certificate was issued for, and what sum was paid for those goods;
- whether the case concerns a precious metal or a precious stone — that alone decides whether the tenfold or the threefold multiplier applies.
These questions are independent of one another. An inaccuracy may be established while the purpose remains disputed, or neither may be in issue and the whole argument may turn on the base sum instead. A defence position therefore has to be built on each element in turn.
What you can do about it
In this category of case a document counts for far more than an explanation. It is worth assembling from the outset the full testing documentation together with the financial material from which the base sum will be derived. A lawyer cannot promise an outcome; the contribution is to test each element separately — the falsification, the purpose, the goods and the sum — against what the article requires.
- the disputed test report and the internal records of how it was prepared;
- the laboratory's accreditation documents;
- the certificate that was issued and the goods identified in it;
- documents evidencing the sum paid for those goods.
Article 179¹ does not name the body that hears such a case and does not set an appeal deadline. Both have to be established from other provisions of the Code and from the document handed to you. On Legal.ge you can find a lawyer with experience in certification matters and administrative offence proceedings.