The UK’s biggest fintech Revolut has been dragged into an ongoing legal drama between US human resources startups Deel and Rippling.
Last month California-based Rippling filed a lawsuit against Deel, claiming the rival HR platform had paid someone to carry out “corporate espionage” at its Dublin office, passing on sensitive information on sales performance, product plans and customer accounts, among other things over a period of four months.
In an affidavit submitted as part of the lawsuit, Rippling employee Keith O’Brien claimed Deel paid him $6,000 a month to pass on this information. In one instance, O’Brien says he passed on intel about hundreds of businesses requesting a Rippling demo in a single day.
O’Brien says the first installment was sent to his Revolut account by Alba Basha Westgarth, the wife of Deel’s COO Dan Westgarth. Rippling has made an application for discovery in an attempt to compel Revolut to share the name and address of the account, listed as belonging to “Alba Basha”, according to court documents seen by Techcrunch.
The company has also demanded access to all the documents the account owner would have needed to submit to set up their Revolut account, such as their ID or utility bills.
A Revolut spokesperson tells Sifted the company would “always comply with any court order request for disclosure”.
Sifted approached Rippling for comment. Deel, which has previously denied any wrongdoing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
