Лажни обвинувања во Холандија: како можете да се заштитите?

Yes, knowingly accusing someone falsely is a criminal offence in the Netherlands, and it is also a wrongful act for which you can claim damages. The main exception is the honest mistake: a report that turns out to be wrong is not punishable if the reporter believed it, and proving that the reporter knew it was untrue is often the hardest part.

Reporting a crime that the reporter knows was never committed is punishable under Article 188 of the Dutch Criminal Code (Ветбук ван Штрафрехт, Sr). Where a false report is made in writing to the authorities against a specific person, and attacks that person’s honour or reputation, it is malicious accusation (ластерлијк аанклахт) under Article 268 Sr. Alongside those criminal routes, a false accusation is a wrongful act (онрехтматиге даад) under Article 6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code (BW). That allows the person accused to claim damages and, where the accusation was made public, rectification.

Knowing this does not make your position easy. Dutch law deliberately keeps the threshold for reporting a crime low and the threshold for punishing a false report high. A system that readily prosecutes reporters would deter genuine victims.

The result is a gap that a determined accuser can use. An investigation can start on an allegation alone, and the damage to reputation, work and family life is done long before anyone assesses whether the allegation was true. Below we explain how Dutch закон deals with that gap, what can actually be proved, and what you should do in the first days if you are accused.

Where does the right to report a crime stop?

Anyone may report a crime, without proof and without any check on plausibility. The law deals with abuse of that right afterwards, not by screening reports in advance.

Under Article 161 of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure (Ветбук од Страфвордеринг, Sv), anyone who knows of a criminal offence is entitled to report it. Under Article 163 Sv a report can be made orally or in writing, and the police record it. There is no requirement to prove anything at that point, no filter for plausibility and no fee. That accessibility is not an oversight. It is what makes the system usable for people who have just been assaulted, defrauded or threatened.

The consequence is that a report sets things in motion. The police record it, and the Public Prosecution Service (Отворено министерство, OM) decides whether to investigate. In serious cases that investigation may involve arrest, questioning, searches, seizure of devices and pre-trial detention. None of that requires the allegation to have been tested first. For the person accused, the practical harm arrives with the investigation, not with the verdict.

There is no procedure to have a report struck out as implausible, and no court reviews a report before the police act on it. What exists is a set of offences aimed at people who misuse the right to report, and a set of civil remedies for the harm they cause. Both are real, and both are harder to use than they look.

Which offences can a false accuser commit?

Four provisions of the Dutch Criminal Code do the work: false report, defamation, libel and malicious accusation. They are not interchangeable, and choosing the wrong one is a common reason a counter-report goes nowhere.

Article 188 Sr: making a false report

Article 188 Sr makes it an offence to report or complain that a criminal offence has been committed, knowing that it has not been committed. It is an offence against public authority. What it protects is the integrity of the criminal justice system and the police time wasted on a fiction.

It does not require any intention to harm a particular person, and the report does not have to name anyone. The decisive element is that the reporter knew the reported offence did not take place.

Членови 261 и 262 од Одделот за кривични дела: клевета и навреда

Article 261 Sr defines defamation (смад): intentionally attacking someone’s honour or reputation by accusing them of a specific fact, with the evident aim of making that fact public. If the accusation is made in writing or in images, the offence is written defamation (смадшрифт). Article 262 Sr defines libel (траен): the same conduct where the person making the accusation knows that it is untrue.

These are the provisions that fit accusations spread outside the police station: at work, in a school WhatsApp group, in an industry association or on social media. They are complaint offences. Under Article 269 Sr the OM may prosecute them only on the complaint of the person against whom the offence was committed. Under Article 66 Sr that complaint must be made within three months after the person entitled to complain became aware of the offence. Letting that period pass is one of the few mistakes in this area that cannot be repaired.

Член 268 Ср: злонамерно обвинување

Article 268 Sr covers the situation at the heart of this article. It applies to someone who intentionally submits a false complaint or report against a specific person to the authorities in writing, or has it recorded, in a way that attacks that person’s honour or reputation. The maximum sentence is two years’ imprisonment or a fine.

The offence combines deceiving the authorities with the intention to harm an individual. It is the provision that fits the use of the police as a weapon in a private conflict. Because the report is recorded, the police record of it is itself the central piece of evidence.

Which provision applies is not a matter of preference. An accusation made verbally to colleagues is not malicious accusation under Article 268 Sr. A report to the police that names nobody is not defamation. And an accusation that turns out to be mistaken, rather than knowingly untrue, is none of them.

Why are convictions for false reporting rare?

Convictions are rare because it is not enough to prove that the accusation was untrue: the prosecution must prove that the accuser knew it was untrue when making it. On top of that come strict evidence rules and a cautious prosecution practice.

The knowledge requirement is the single most important point to understand. An acquittal establishes that guilt could not be proved. It does not establish that the report was a lie.

That is a deliberate choice. People regularly report events they experienced as criminal that a court later finds were not. They may identify the wrong person, or reconstruct a traumatic sequence of events inaccurately. If being wrong were enough to be prosecuted, the cost of reporting would fall on precisely the people the system exists to protect. The legislature drew the line at knowledge, and courts apply it strictly. Taking the risk that a statement might be false does not meet the test of reporting an offence “knowing that it has not been committed”.

A second obstacle is evidence. Article 342(2) Sv provides that a court may not find an offence proved on the statement of a single witness alone. In a false accusation case, the person accused is by definition the only witness to their own innocence.

A conviction of the accuser therefore needs independent support. Think of location data, camera footage, messages, financial records, a medical file that contradicts the account, or witnesses who can place the accuser elsewhere. Where the case is one word against another, no conviction follows in either direction.

Third, prosecution is selective. The OM has a published guideline for false reports, the Richtlijn voor strafvordering valse aangifte. It mainly sets the level of the sentence the prosecutor demands, ranging from community service to imprisonment in serious cases. Whether a case is prosecuted at all remains a decision of the OM. In practice, prosecutions tend to be brought where the falsity can be shown, the intent is evident and the harm is substantial.

The realistic conclusion is that criminal prosecution of the accuser is the least reliable route available. It is still worth pursuing, because it protects the record and can lead to an investigation that produces evidence. But it should not be your only plan.

In which situations do false accusations arise?

Most false accusation cases arise in three settings: a relationship breakdown, the workplace, and a long-running private conflict. The setting matters because it tells you where the supporting evidence is likely to be.

The first setting is the breakdown of a relationship, particularly where children are involved. An allegation of domestic violence or abuse made during a dispute about contact and residence has an immediate procedural effect. A report to child protection services or a criminal investigation will normally make the family court cautious about contact while it is pending. The evidence that matters here is chronological: what was alleged, when, and what was happening in the parallel family proceedings at that moment.

The second setting is the workplace. Allegations of harassment, intimidation or fraud can be used to remove a manager, to pre-empt a performance process or to change the story behind a dismissal. Employers must take complaints seriously but are often poorly equipped to investigate them. The person accused is therefore frequently suspended before any assessment has been made. The relevant evidence is often already in the employer’s systems, and it can be lost quickly.

The third setting is the long-running private conflict: neighbours, former business partners, members of the same association. Here the telling sign is repetition. A series of reports, complaints to regulators and messages to shared contacts may each prove little on their own. Together they can show a pattern that a court will recognise, even where no single report can be proved false.

We deliberately avoid characterising the person making the allegation. Speculation about someone’s mental health or personality is not evidence. It is not something a law firm should publish about an identifiable opponent, and in proceedings it tends to make the party advancing it look worse. What persuades a court is a documented sequence of events and a demonstrable motive, not a diagnosis.

What should you do in the first days after an accusation?

Stay silent until you have spoken to a lawyer, do not contact the accuser, secure your evidence and handle your employer carefully. Almost every irreversible mistake in a false accusation case is made in the first week, before anyone has taken advice.

Say nothing to the police until you have spoken to a lawyer. As a suspect you have the right to remain silent. You also have the right to consult a lawyer before the first interview and to have your lawyer present during it.

The urge to explain and to clear things up is understandable, but acting on it is the most damaging thing you can do. A detailed account given from memory under stress will contain small inaccuracies, and small inaccuracies are what a false accusation case is built on. Our кривично право team can be reached before a first interview, and that is when the call is worth the most.

Do not contact the accuser. Not to ask what they are doing, not to appeal to reason, not through a friend. Contact after a report is easily presented as intimidation or influencing a witness. It can lead to a restraining order or a further criminal charge, and it turns a case about the original allegation into a case about your own conduct afterwards.

Secure the evidence immediately, and do not select from it. That means location history, bank and card transactions, public transport check-ins, door and camera logs, calendar entries, complete message threads rather than screenshots of selected lines, and emails including the headers. Make copies and note where each item came from. Data of this kind is often deleted automatically after a limited period, sometimes only weeks. A request to a provider to preserve it must be made quickly and through the proper channel.

Write down the timeline while it is fresh, for your lawyer and nobody else. Include what was happening in any parallel dispute when the report was made. Motive is rarely proved directly; it usually follows from the sequence of events.

Handle the employment side carefully. An employer that learns of an investigation will often suspend first and think later. Suspension is not a penalty in itself and can be reasonable. A dismissal or a settlement agreement based on an untested allegation, however, is a separate problem under Dutch закон за вработување, and it is much easier to prevent than to undo. Do not sign anything in the first week, and let your lawyer contact the employer.

Which criminal law steps can you take?

You can file a counter-report and, if the OM decides not to prosecute your accuser, complain to the court of appeal under Article 12 Sv. Both steps have their uses, but neither is quick.

Filing a counter-report (тегенаангифте) for false reporting, defamation or malicious accusation is the formal first step. Expect the police to put it on hold until the original investigation is finished. That is normal and not a refusal. In the meantime, the counter-report gives you a dated record of your position. Sometimes it also gives the investigating officers a reason to test the original account more carefully.

If the OM decides not to prosecute your accuser, that decision is not final. Article 12 Sv allows a directly interested party to complain to the court of appeal (герехтшоф) about a decision not to prosecute or not to continue a prosecution. The court examines the file afresh. It can order that a prosecution be brought or continued, and it can direct that specific investigative steps are taken first. You do not need a lawyer to file the complaint, although legal help usually improves it.

The deadline depends on how the case was closed. If you received a formal notice of non-prosecution, or a penalty order (штрафбешчикинг) was issued, the complaint must be filed within three months after you became aware of it. If the case was simply dropped without such a notice, a complaint remains possible for as long as the right to prosecute has not lapsed. That limitation period follows from Article 70 Sr and depends on the maximum sentence for the offence in question.

An Article 12 complaint is a written procedure with a hearing behind closed doors. It succeeds where the file shows both that a conviction is realistic and that prosecution is in the public interest. It is not a way to express dissatisfaction. A complaint that does not deal with the evidence is dismissed quickly.

Which civil law remedies work best?

For most people, a civil claim for damages, rectification or an injunction is the most effective route. You bring it yourself, so it does not depend on prosecution policy.

The civil court decides on the evidence you and your opponent put before it, and it allocates the burden of proof according to the ordinary civil rules. That is a different exercise from the criminal standard. Still, if you claim that someone committed a criminal act against you, you will have to make that out convincingly.

The basis is Article 6:162 BW. A false accusation that harms another person is a wrongful act, and the person who makes it is liable for the resulting damage if it can be attributed to them. Where the accusation was made public, the court also weighs freedom of expression against the protection of honour and reputation. It looks at the seriousness of the allegation, the support it had in the material available when it was made, the way it was phrased, the position of the person who made it and the harm caused.

Three remedies follow from that basis. – Damages for financial loss under Article 6:162 BW, such as legal costs, lost income, costs of treatment and lost contracts. – Compensation for non-financial loss under Article 6:106 BW, where you were harmed in your honour or reputation or otherwise in your person. The court sets the amount on an equitable basis. – Rectification under Article 6:167 BW, where incorrect or misleading factual information has been published. This is often worth more to a client than money, because it is the only remedy that addresses what they actually lost.

Interim relief is also available. In preliminary relief proceedings (краток преглед) you can ask for an order to remove a publication, to stop repetition or to refrain from contact, in weeks rather than years. Where the accusation is circulating online, that is usually the first application to make.

On timing, a claim for damages under Article 3:310 BW lapses five years after the day following the day on which you became aware of both the damage and the person liable, and in any event twenty years after the event. Article 3:310 BW also provides that where the damage results from a criminal offence, the claim against the offender does not lapse as long as the right to prosecute that offence has not lapsed. In serious cases that extends the period considerably. Do not rely on that extension without checking it against the specific offence.

Може ли да се запре гонењето против вас?

In theory yes, but a court almost never ends a case only because the report was malicious. What can matter is how the OM handled the report.

Clients often ask whether a court can throw the case out because the report was malicious. When a criminal case comes to trial, the court first deals with the formal questions in Article 348 Sv: is the summons valid, does the court have jurisdiction, may the OM prosecute (ontvankelijkheid), and is there a reason to suspend the case. The defence can raise the admissibility point as a preliminary objection, as provided in Article 283 Sv.

Declaring the OM inadmissible is the heaviest sanction available. It is reserved for cases in which the right to a fair trial has been so seriously harmed that no lesser response is enough. Where a lesser response is possible, the court will reduce the sentence or exclude evidence instead.

The fact that a report was false does not in itself make the prosecution inadmissible. What can matter is what the OM did with it. Was obvious exculpatory material ignored? Was the investigation steered? Was the defence denied the chance to test the account? That is why the work must be done during the investigation: by putting the contradicting material in front of the prosecutor and asking for specific investigative steps, rather than saving the argument for the hearing.

If the case ends without a penalty, the Code of Criminal Procedure allows a former suspect to apply for compensation for time spent in custody and for the costs of the defence. You make these applications to the court after the case has ended, and short deadlines apply. Note them in your diary on the day the case closes. A decision in your favour also has evidential value in a later civil claim against the accuser.

A new Code of Criminal Procedure was adopted by the Senate (Првата соба) on 24 February 2026. It is scheduled to enter into force on 1 April 2029 and will renumber the articles mentioned here. Until then, the current code applies.

пример

A hypothetical example: after a business partnership breaks down, a former partner reports the other partner to the police for embezzlement and tells mutual customers about it. The accused partner says nothing in the first interview until he has spoken to his lawyer, and secures the bank records and emails showing that the payments were agreed.

The criminal case is dropped. The accused partner then files a complaint for defamation within three months, and in parallel asks the civil court for an order to stop the statements to customers and for rectification. The civil route produces a result long before any decision on prosecuting the former partner.

Во краток преглед

• A knowingly false report is a criminal offence (Articles 188 and 268 Sr), and spreading false accusations can be defamation or libel (Articles 261 and 262 Sr).
• Criminal convictions are rare, because the accuser must have known the accusation was untrue and a single statement is not enough evidence.
• In the first days: stay silent until you have spoken to a lawyer, do not contact the accuser, secure your evidence and sign nothing with your employer.
• Watch the three-month deadlines: for a complaint about defamation or libel, and for an Article 12 Sv complaint after a formal notice of non-prosecution.
• The civil route usually works best: damages, compensation for harm to your reputation, rectification and a quick injunction in preliminary relief proceedings.

Често поставувани прашања за лажни обвинувања

Која е разликата помеѓу лажен извештај и погрешен?

A false report is one the reporter knows to be untrue. A mistaken report is made in the honest belief that something happened. Only the first is a criminal offence, and the difference lies in what the reporter knew, not in what turned out to be true. That is why an acquittal does not automatically expose the person who reported you to prosecution.

Дали треба веднаш да поднесам контра-извештај?

Usually yes, but take advice on the timing and on which offence to name. A counter-report filed in anger and without evidence achieves little and can be used to suggest that you are the aggressor. A counter-report prepared with the supporting material attached is a different document altogether.

Колку долго треба да дејствувам?

Several deadlines run at the same time. A complaint for defamation or libel must be made within three months after you became aware of the offence (Article 66 Sr). An Article 12 Sv complaint against a formal notice of non-prosecution must be filed within three months after you became aware of that decision. A civil claim for damages is subject to the five-year period in Article 3:310 BW. The three-month periods are the ones people miss.

Може ли да побарам надомест за штетата на мојот углед?

Yes. You claim financial loss under Article 6:162 BW, and non-financial loss for harm to your honour and reputation under Article 6:106 BW, which the court assesses on an equitable basis. Dutch awards for non-financial loss are moderate. The more valuable remedies are therefore often rectification under Article 6:167 BW and an injunction against repetition.

Мојот работодавач ме суспендираше. Може ли да го направи тоа?

An employer may suspend an employee on full pay while it investigates a serious allegation, provided it has a real reason and acts proportionately. What it may not do is treat an untested allegation as an established fact. If the suspension turns into a dismissal or a settlement agreement, that is a separate dispute with its own deadlines. It should be handled by an employment lawyer alongside the criminal matter, not afterwards.

Обвинението се шири на интернет. Што можам брзо да направам?

Preliminary relief proceedings can produce an order within weeks to remove a publication and not to repeat it. Preserve the material first, with dates and URLs, because it will disappear once the application is served. Requests to platforms can run alongside a court application, but they rarely replace one.

Дали ми треба адвокат ако сум невин?

Particularly if you are innocent. The evidence rules that make a false report hard to punish also make an untested denial hard to rely on. The decisions that determine the outcome are taken before anyone has assessed whether the allegation is true: above all what you say in the first interview and what evidence is secured.

Legal protection against false accusations: four more questions

The questions below cover the points raised most often about the link between a report, the offences it may itself constitute, and the damage caused before any court has ruled.

Како Law & More може да помогне

Law & More advises and represents people who face accusations they say are untrue, on every front on which such a case is fought. We act in the criminal investigation from the first interview, secure and present the material that contradicts the allegation, prepare counter-reports and Article 12 Sv complaints, bring civil proceedings for damages and rectification, seek interim orders where an accusation is circulating, and deal with the employment consequences alongside all of it. Unsure where you stand? Tell us about your situation. We will let you know your options within one working day.