Apostille on an electronic police record: a case study

A client received a police record through the state services portal — an electronic document in PDF with an enhanced qualified signature of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A German authority requested a record with an apostille. A deadlock arose: an apostille is a physical stamp on a paper document, and all that was in hand was a file, legally valid though it was.

How to get an apostillable record from an electronic one

Path one. Order a paper-carrier record from the Ministry of Internal Affairs — through the migration unit or the same portal with the paper option selected — and apostille that paper record at the competent authority. Slower, but it is a "clean" Ministry document, to which foreign authorities have the fewest questions.

Path two. Ask a notary for a paper-carrier document equivalent to the electronic one: the notary checks the qualified electronic signature on the PDF and certifies that the printout is equivalent. That notarial document is then apostilled through the territorial branch of the Ministry of Justice. Faster if the paper record from the Ministry has a long wait, but not always suitable: some foreign bodies want the apostille specifically on the Ministry's record, not on a notarial "transfer to paper".

Order and translation

Settle the format at the start, in correspondence with the receiving side: a paper Ministry record plus an apostille, or an electronic record → notarial paper → apostille of the Ministry of Justice. After the apostille — the translation: the text of the record, all the marks, and the apostille stamp are translated, and then the translation is notarised.

Allow one to two weeks for the whole chain and remember the record's validity period — it runs while you are arranging all this. If time allows, it is simpler to order the paper record straight away and keep the electronic one for countries that accept documents in digital form without an apostille.