Regulators, legislators and employment tribunals

analysisThe business news outlet reported in December 2023 that in July 2023 Representative Adam Schiff and five other House members wrote an open letter expressing concern about claims that Deel had misclassified its own full-time workforce as freelancers and urging the Labor Department to investigate. Alex Bouaziz called it a misunderstanding and met Schiff in September 2023; a Schiff spokesperson told the business news outlet the meeting "helped clear up the issues" raised in the letter, and Deel's later Delaware complaint says Schiff had effectively walked back his request. The letter was not a regulatory finding, and the record contains no Labor Department decision. ^{1 2}

analysisA spokesperson for Singapore's Ministry of Manpower told the business news outlet in December 2023 that "investigations into [Deel] are ongoing". Bouaziz said Deel was working with Singapore and that, operating in 120 countries, it had investigations all the time, and Deel's spokesperson Elisabeth Diana called them routine government inquiries. The subject and outcome of the inquiries are not in the record. ¹

analysisThe business news outlet also reported that in September 2023 Deel became entangled in a Commodity Futures Trading Commission probe into its client My Forex Funds, which US authorities formally charged with fraud; Deel was not directly implicated, and Bouaziz said it had removed that client and more than a dozen similar foreign-currency trading firms on its banks' advice. The competitor Papaya Global then ran a marketing campaign questioning whether Deel took shortcuts on compliance. ¹

analysisA footnote in Rippling's amended complaint alleges that Deel continued offering employer-of-record services in Russia into 2025 despite US sanctions, banks with the sanctioned Russian bank T-Bank according to public records, misclassified its own personnel, launched regulated payroll and PEO services without proper licences and was investigated by Singapore's Ministry of Manpower. No regulator's finding to this effect is in the record. Deel's Delaware complaint describes attention to its Russia-sanctions compliance as part of a Rippling strategy to divert attention from Rippling's own alleged evasion of Russia-related sanctions orders; the record contains no Deel response specific to the footnote. ^{1 2}

analysisDeel Ireland EOR Limited was the respondent in a 2026 decision of Ireland's Workplace Relations Commission (ADJ-00064133) on more than twenty complaints by a former head of sales, a private individual not named here, whom it employed from May to December 2025. They included complaints that he was treated less favourably on the family-status ground and penalised in connection with his parent's leave, and complaints under working-time and pay legislation. The company gave no direct evidence and called no witnesses; through its lawyers it rejected his account and maintained that its actions were lawful, reasonable and consistent with its contractual rights and operational requirements. ^{1 2}

analysisIn a decision dated 30 June 2026 the adjudication officer found that the company had not rebutted the inference of discrimination on the family-status ground and upheld the complaints of penalisation under the parental-leave legislation and of breaches of Sunday-premium and weekly-rest rights in June 2025, while rejecting other complaints; a broadcaster reported that the company was ordered to pay €51,004.20 in total. ^{1 2}

analysisIn England, Lets Deel Ltd acts as an employer of record, the organisation legally responsible for employment matters on a client's behalf. An employment tribunal found at a preliminary hearing in November 2024 that a claimant had been employed by Lets Deel Ltd from January to June 2023 while working for the German company Gitpod GmbH; the claimant's discrimination claims were not decided in the retained document. A tribunal sitting at Watford dismissed another former employee's claim against Lets Deel Ltd on 23 June 2025 after the claimant did not attend, without a decision on the merits. ^{3 4}