Deel CEO not served in Rippling lawsuit as whistleblower placed under 24/7 guard
Bailiffs fail to reach Alex Bouaziz in Paris, while HR tech feud escalates into transnational legal battle.
Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz has yet to be served in the Rippling lawsuit, as French bailiffs have been unable to locate him in Paris. U.S.-based Rippling is suing Israeli-founded Deel over what it claims was a sophisticated internal spying operation.
Central to the case is Keith O’Brien, a former payroll manager in Dublin who has admitted to acting as a covert mole inside Rippling—allegedly under Deel’s direction.
O’Brien, who says he was paid $6,000 a month by Deel to pass along confidential documents, is now under 24-hour security at his North Dublin home. The measures—along with new safety upgrades to the house he shares with his wife—are being paid for by Rippling, according to the Irish Independent.
The civil case, playing out in Ireland’s High Court, has already named Bouaziz, Deel’s general counsel Asif Malik, and senior legal director David Mieli as defendants. But serving them with legal papers has proven difficult. French bailiffs could not locate Bouaziz at his listed Paris address, according to Ireland’s Business Post. Meanwhile, attempts to serve Malik in the UK failed after it emerged that he had relocated to Dubai.
Bouaziz’s LinkedIn page has him based in Tel Aviv, further complicating the matter. Rippling may now petition the court for permission to serve the defendants by email, a step typically reserved for cases where traditional service is not possible.
Once formal service is complete, the defendants will have four weeks to respond—or risk a default judgment.
The broader allegations read like a plot from a corporate thriller. According to court documents and sworn affidavits, O’Brien not only transmitted proprietary data to Deel, but also accused Malik and Mieli of directing him to submit falsified reports to law enforcement, including fabricated claims of Russian-sanctioned payments by Rippling.
Though Deel has denied the charges and has not yet filed a legal response, the case has already produced visible fallout. Elisabeth Diana, the company’s longtime communications chief and a former Facebook executive, quietly left the company in April. Deel has declined to comment on whether the departure is linked to the ongoing scandal.
The court has so far stopped short of penalizing O’Brien for destroying evidence—he admitted to smashing his phone with an axe and dumping it in a drain—but acknowledged the seriousness of his breach. Justice Mark Sanfey noted that while O’Brien’s conduct “blatantly” violated court orders, his eventual cooperation and the threats he faced mitigated the need for a punitive sanction.
Now, with the defendants scattered across three countries and the legal process straining to keep up, Rippling’s campaign to hold Deel accountable is entering its most complex phase yet.
