Facebook Spends Millions to Keep Mack Zuckerberg Alive

Facebook Spends Millions to Keep Mack Zuckerberg Alive

The fourth richest person in the world, chairman, chief executive and co-founder of Facebook, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, seems to have a lot of millions spent on his security details.

It was revealed that Facebook has spent more than $16 million on him and his family in just five years, due to ‘specific’ threats to the Facebook Chief Executive.

The firm handling his security details published this staggering amount in a regulatory filing; revealing that in 2015, $5 million was invested in bodyguards and other protective services to ensure the safety of its founder and CEO.

Asides that, millions have been spent to ensure he travels safely, in addition to installing alarms in his $10 million home in San-Francisco.

Zuckerberg has 16 bodyguards working on rotation to protect him; his wife, Priscilla and their daughter Maxima.

The regulatory filing defends the figure.

The Chief Operating Officer of Facebook is not left out in this whooping expenditure, as $1.2 million worth of security measures is spent to protect her – and has been compared to what is spent on Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook ($209,000), Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($1.5 million), and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($1.6 million).

One of the reasons why such security can be afforded is because he owns nearly 422 million shares of Facebook stock. And a $1-a-year salary.

This security detailing has become an issue as his neighbours have come out to state that his guards take up a lot of space in the residential street.

The letter written to document this fact was obtained by Buzzfeed and distributed to residents in the area (Liberty Hill). See an excerpt from the letter:

'I think we've all tried to be as patient and civil as possible during the very long construction, the noise, the trash, the blocking of streets, etc'.

 'Now that all that circus is done, we are left with 2 silver SUV's permanently occupying desirable parking spots.

 'It goes without saying that living close to Dolores Park and the awesome neighbouring districts already creates a challenge when it comes to street parking, so the 2 spots that are illegally being held for Zuck only makes matters worse.' 

However, Facebook maintains that the security details is as a result of the threats Zuckerberg has been receiving, in particular reference to the one he received from ISIS earlier this year.

This is a reply from the Facebook management:

'Because of the high visibility of our company, our compensation & governance committee has authorized an "overall security program" for Mr. Zuckerberg to address safety concerns due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as our founder, Chairman, and CEO'.

'We require these security measures for the company's benefit because of the importance of Mr. Zuckerberg to Facebook, and we believe that the costs of this overall security program are appropriate and necessary.'

Facebook has vowed to follow Twitter's example in shutting down accounts that have terrorist links.  Sheryl Sandberg also called on users to 'attack' any terrorist-linked posts with 'likes'.