Clyde & Co's MEA employment team successful in Employment Standards Office jurisdiction case in the QFC

Clyde & Co’s MEA employment team has successfully represented the Qatar Financial Centre’s Employment Standards Office in establishing its jurisdiction to recover amounts required to be paid under Employment Standards Office’s Determinations through proceedings in the QFC Civil and Commercial Court, in QFC Employment Standards Office v Expert Credit Solutions Consultancy LLC [2026] QIC (F) 5.

Ben Brown, Partner, and Lee Rogers, Senior Associate, of Clyde & Co, along with Tom Ogg of 11KBW Chambers, successfully represented the ESO in these proceedings.

The QFC Employment Standards Office (ESO) has the power to make ‘Determinations’, under which it may, for example, order a party (usually an employer) to pay unpaid wages to an employee. 

The issue that arose in this case was: what happens if the employer does not comply with the ESO’s order to pay contained in the Determination? The QFC Employment Regulations and the QFC Law are silent on the issue, and the ESO has no enforcement mechanism of its own.  

The Court held at paragraph 21: “We conclude that the ESO is right to submit that, once it had made an order against the Respondent ordering the payment of QAR 22,560 to the Interested Party and this sum remained unpaid, the ESO itself had power to enforce the statutory debt owing to the having to pursue the debt personally.”

The QFC Civil and Commercial Court accordingly decided that it has jurisdiction to hear an application for an order to enforce an ESO Determination. Importantly, the Court decided that such an application may be made by either the ESO or the beneficiary of the order in question (e.g. an employee). 

In so deciding, the Court accepted the ESO’s submission that a failure to pay an amount owing under an ESO Determination - which amounts to a failure to comply with the ESO’s order, in breach of Article 57of the Employment Regulations - creates a civil dispute between the ESO and the party subject of that order. Accordingly the Court had jurisdiction under article 8(3)(c)(2) of the QFC Law. It is not a matter that falls within the jurisdiction of the Regulatory Tribunal. 

The Court further determined that the amount owing should be treated as a statutory debt, as an extension to the principle established in QFC Employment Standards Office v Meinhardt BIM Studios LLC [2024] QIC (F) 45. Interest may therefore be payable on any such debt. 

In this case, the Respondent had paid the amount owing to the beneficiary of the ESO’s Determination, who was an interested party to the proceedings. But that payment was made only two days before the hearing. The Court held: “It is unconscionable simply to leave a statutory debt unpaid until so shortly before a hearing that costs are inevitably incurred by the counterparty, and we agree that this is a case where it is appropriate to order indemnity costs.”

To discuss any of the points raisied please reach out to Ben Brown or Lee Rogers.