Article 282 of the Criminal Code

What Article 282 of the Criminal Code punishes

Article 282 makes false or misleading advertising a criminal offence, punishing manufacturers or traders who, in their offers or advertising of products or services, make false claims or state untrue characteristics about them, provided that conduct can cause serious and obvious harm to consumers. Ordinary advertising exaggeration common in the marketplace is not enough: the offence requires an objective falsehood about relevant aspects of the product or service (composition, performance, origin, properties, price, terms) and a real, significant risk of harm to whoever relies on that information.

This is an offence of danger, not of result: it does not require the consumer to actually buy the product or suffer the harm, only that the false advertising be capable of causing it in a serious and obvious way. The conduct can coexist with liability arising from other offences, such as fraud, if deceit is also present that leads to an act of financial disposal.

Penalty

The penalty is six months to one year in prison, or a fine of twelve to twenty-four months, without prejudice to the penalties applicable for other offences committed through the same false advertising, such as fraud.

Common scenarios

This offence can arise in advertising campaigns that attribute non-existent curative or medical properties to a product, in selling dietary supplements or cosmetics with efficacy claims lacking scientific backing, in marketing vehicles or property while hiding defects or essential characteristics, or in commercial offers advertising terms, prices or guarantees that are later not honoured and were designed precisely to mislead on a mass scale. It can also occur in digital marketing campaigns using fake reviews or testimonials attributing non-existent results to a product or service.

Defense strategy

The defense should focus on distinguishing between advertising exaggeration tolerated by trade practice —so-called "puffery"— and an objective falsehood about verifiable facts, since only the latter has criminal relevance. It is essential to establish, through technical or expert evidence, whether the advertising claims had a reasonable objective basis at the time they were made, and to assess whether the potential harm truly reached the seriousness and obviousness the offence requires. It is also worth examining whether the facts should instead be handled through consumer-protection administrative channels, given the principle of minimum criminal-law intervention, where the conduct is not serious enough to merit criminal reproach. Finally, it is worth checking who within the company actually approved or drafted the advertising content, since criminal liability under Article 282 is personal and should not automatically fall on a business owner who had no real involvement in the marketing decision.