When you’re really, really, rich, you basically have a target on your back.

The media and public are always going to scrutinise how you spend your money and how you live your life, and then there is the constant threat of something like kidnapping.

Just last year, Africa’s youngest billionaire, 43-year-old Mohammed Dewji, was seized as he arrived for a morning workout in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

He was found tied up in an area where police were searching houses, leading authorities to believe that kidnappers fled to avoid arrest.

The long and short of all this is that these high-profile, super-rich people need security protection, and that doesn’t always come cheap. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, his personal security costs have increased exponentially, with Forbes reporting:

…in the aftermath of last spring’s shooting rampage at YouTube’s headquarters, which left three people injured and rattled Silicon Valley, Facebook’s board of directors granted Zuckerberg a $10 million yearly allowance to pay for the personnel, equipment and services needed to keep him and his family safe.

That was on top of the security that Facebook already provides Zuckerberg, who boasts a net worth of $62.3 billion. The company also pays for his personal aircraft (to the tune of $1.5 million) “in connection with his overall security program.”

Spending on Zuckerberg’s personal security increased more than 500% from 2012 to 2017—a sum that doesn’t take into account the $10 million allocated to Zuckerberg in July or the measures the company has taken to harden its defenses at its Menlo Park, California, campus.

That compares with a 220% increase in his net worth over that same period, to $56 billion in 2017. Some of the security measures adopted appear ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy thriller, including a rumored “panic chute” for making quick escapes.

A panic chute sounds like something we could all use. Look, there’s that person we’ve been promising to have catch-up drinks with for years, but really don’t want to see.

Activate panic chute and boom, problem solved.

According to Gizmodo, the chute is a topic of much discussion:

There’s also a persistent rumor among Facebook employees that he has a secret “panic chute” his team can evacuate him down to get him out of the office in a hurry. The truth of this matter remains murky: One source said they had been briefed about the existence of a top-secret exit route through the floor of the conference room into the parking garage, but others said they had no knowledge of it. Facebook declined to comment on this.

I hope it’s true.

When you compare Zuck’s security costs against other billionaires, he’s head and shoulders above:

Once a billionaire becomes recognisable, the worry around personal safety increases.

Here’s Insite Risk Management president, Christopher Falkenberg:

“Let’s say you have a totally under-the-radar billionaire. Nobody knew who they were,” Falkenberg says. “If that billionaire had a totally ordinary lifestyle, literally lived a life like the dentist down the street … there is no more risk to that person than there is the dentist down the street, unless someone is opening their bank statements.”

It’s common knowledge that Facebook’s reputation is in tatters, following the privacy fiasco and hundreds of other horrid headlines, so spending big on protecting the company’s key employees is probably necessary:

…Facebook has dramatically expanded its security apparatus, as the social network girds against a range of perceived threats from car bombs to state-sponsored espionage to stolen prototypes. It reported that a 6,000-strong security army quietly protect its tens of thousands of employees and armed executive protection officers stand guard outside Zuckerberg’s homes.

“All it takes is one crazy guy in some state in the United States that’s fixated on that and he becomes fixated to the point where he’s blaming Zuckerberg,” said Kent Moyer, chief executive of World Protection Group, a security firm in Beverly Hills that counts celebrities and other high-net-worth individuals among its clients. “Add to that mental illness a fixation on guns and weapons, and before you know it this guy is up at the doorstep of Mark Zuckerberg.”

Add to that the fact that anybody can snap up weapons in America without much hassle, and the country’s mass shooting epidemic, and you have a recipe for potential disaster.

Maybe it’s money well spent, then.

[source:forbes&gizmodo]