According to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook spent over $23 million on safety for CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year. According to a proxy statement filed on Friday, Facebook’s annual security assessments “listed relevant threats to Mr. Zuckerberg.”
According to the company’s annual security assessment, the costs of protecting Zuckerberg and his family increased in 2020, owing to COVID-19 travel protocols, increased security coverage during the 2020 US election season ” and other times of increased security risk,” and rising security staff costs.
The position of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is defined in the proxy as follows: “He is synonymous with Facebook, and as a result, negative sentiment about our business is directly associated with, and sometimes transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
According to the proxy statement’s “all other compensation” portion, Facebook spent $23 million on personal protection at Zuckerberg’s homes and travel for him and his family. A further $10 million was provided to the CEO for security staff and other security costs. Last year, the cost of base security increased to $13.4 million, up from $10.4 million the previous year.
In light of the threat environment and the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg has requested to earn only $1 in annual salary and does not receive any bonus payments, equity incentives, or other incentive rewards, the compensation, nominating & governance committee agrees that these costs are reasonable and required, according to the proxy statement.
In the proxy filed Friday, Facebook also stated that at its May 26th shareholder meeting, it would propose providing personal protection to non-employee directors from time to time, citing the “ongoing scrutiny’ that ‘our directors face as a result of their service on our board of directors.”
According to the proxy statement, Facebook approved personal security services for certain non-employee directors in January and February “in light of the high level of scrutiny faced by our business and our executive officers and directors, as well as the complex and charged environment following the 2020 United States elections and the attack on the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.”
Despite Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s claims that the “events were mostly organized on platforms that don’t have our ability to stop hate, don’t have our standards, and don’t have our transparency,” a January report by the Tech Transparency Project found that some extremist rioters at the Capitol attack had used private Facebook groups for months to plan and coordinate the January 6th insurgency.
