World’s second richest man sells his private jet so climate activists can’t track his plane
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The man behind Louis Vuitton, Moët, and more huge luxury brands has sold his private jet after constant social media scrutiny over his carbon footprint.
The second richest person on the planet, Bernard Arnault, confirmed on French radio that he has let go of his personal plane.
But before you throw your hands up in the air to celebrate, that does not mean he isn't zipping around the world on exclusive air services.
Instead, he told France's Radio Classique that he's merely renting other private jets so he can't be tracked by activists.
"Indeed, with all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it," the 73-year-old French tycoon said, as per Sky News.
"The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes."
The luxury products CEO was consistently dogged and heckled by Twitter accounts such as @i_fly_Bernard and @laviondebernard, who were constantly looking into his affairs in the name of the environment.
The social media profiles would track and calculate his carbon footprint, which was then used to berate the LVMH Moët Hennessy Chairman online.
However, his son, Antoine, claimed in the same interview that the reasoning behind the sale was to keep the location of the world's second richest man a secret from the public.
The 45-year-old claimed it was for security and business reasons.
"It's not very good that our competitors can know where we are at any moment," Antoine told Classique.
Bernard Arnault has a net worth of $152 billion (£134bn), according to Forbes' real-time billionaires list, surpassing Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who has a paltry USD$138.5 billion (AUD$220.8 billion, £123.4 billion).
This isn't the first time a billionaire has found themselves in the spotlight for their extensive travel logs.
Elon Musk didn't take too kindly to having his private jet tracked by a teenager, who was posting the flight data onto social media.
Twitter account @ElonJet has been using publicly available information to follow the tech billionaire's movements for months and has amassed quite the following, currently sitting at over 88,000 followers.
The account broadcasts the movements of Musk’s jet through the clever use of bots that collate air traffic data.
However, as per Protocol’s report, Musk actually contacted Sweeney to ask him to take the ‘Elon Musk’s Jet’ offline.
In order to tempt the 19-year-old, he offered him $5,000.
Sweeney turned down the offer and asked for $50,000, which Musk didn't accept.
The teenager instead changed his offer and said he would take down the Twitter account if he could interview Musk on one of his private jets.
Topics: News, Money, Climate Change, World News
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