The Security and Exchange Commission says Amazon spends $1.6 million to keep CEO Jeff Bezos safe. At the beginning of 2019, the company installed bulletproof panels in Jeff Bezos’s Seattle office.
According to Armortex, the manufacturer, the bulletproof panels can resist multiple blasts and multiple shots of assault rifles. Here are the details.
And it is not just Jeff Bezos concerned about safety, Apple reportedly spent around $310,000 on personal security of CEO Tim Cook in 2018. And Oracle spent $1.6 million for CEO Larry Ellison too. While Facebook has gone insanely big by spending close to $20 million on the security CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year.
Well! This governs the fact that being rich isn’t easy and protecting oneself is much required.
Arnette Heintze (CEO & Founder, Hillard Heintze) stated…
These numbers are certainly justified knowing the climate of our world today and especially with our technology and social media advancements – Arnette Heintze
But we are talking primarily about Bezos here. What made Amazon spend $1.6 million on his safety?
It all started 7 months ago, October when Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist was murdered in Saudi. But what it has to do with Jeff Bezos? Simply because The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos himself.
On November 16, 2018, the Washington Post claimed that the murder was ordered by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman as concluded by the CIA. Here is the whole report for complete details.
After this, the Saudi government attacked Bezos over social media and spread a word of boycotting Amazon. The hashtag #boycottAmazon became trending over Twitter and thousands of people from Saudi Arabia started tweeting against Amazon.
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I was premier customer as I ordered weekly from Amazon, but now I delete my account until they stop attacking my government .#مقاطعه_امازون_وسوق_دوت_كوم
— MBS??Nonni (@nonni909) November 5, 2018
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I’m going to cancel my #Amazon subscription. #BoycottAmazon #Washingtonpost https://t.co/vp2e7Uy3Aa
— العنــــود (@A_140_) November 4, 2018
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And there were many more like these.
This stretched till December and later in January, the National Enquirer joined the conversation by exposing bezos’ love affair. In February, The private investigators working for Jeff Bezos found that Lauren Sanchez’s (Jeff Bezos’ mistress) brother leaked their intimate text messages to the National Enquirer.
After this, Bezos gave a blank check to his longtime security consultant Gavin de Becker to investigate this issue further.
The Enquirer’s parent company, AMI, soon found out about the investigation and threatened to blackmail Bezos with the release of additional revealing photos if the Amazon chief and de Becker didn’t publicly state that they had “no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”
De Becker concluded that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pilfered Bezos’ private information.
Much of Amazon’s security operations that protect Bezos aren’t broken out separately in SEC filings.
Amazon has in recent years started beefing up security for Bezos’ top lieutenants, Worldwide Consumer chief Jeff Wilke and Andy Jassy, who heads Amazon’s cloud business.
The Seattle company spent about $75,000 to protect Jassy and Wilke outside company facilities and business trips last year, more than double their security expenditures in 2017.
Last year, Wilke’s office was outfitted with bulletproof glass, blast-resistant doors, and panic buttons as part of a $3.4 million high-security renovation project.
An elite group of guards known as Executive Protection Agents is charged with protecting senior executives.
Current agents, who have backgrounds in the Marines, U.S. Secret Service, and on SWAT teams, execute security and logistical plans when senior executives travel or make public appearances, evacuate them during workplace crises, and maintain a database of communications and personnel who pose potential threats to the executives, according to a recent job posting for the position.
Bezos and his ex-wife, MacKenzie, were shadowed by a brawny guard with an earpiece at the grand opening of Amazon’s terrarium-like Spheres building last year. Similar-looking men flanked Bezos after Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting a few months later.
Amazon’s more than 45,000 corporate employees in Seattle rely on an army of low-level security contractors paid to protect them and the more than 10 million square feet of office space they occupy.
Bill Pola, a former Amazon security contractor, managed a team of the guards posted at the entrance of every building. He investigated incidents like theft, vandalism, and occasional violence on the campus using video surveillance of employees scanning their name badges at turnstiles, elevators, and other secured areas equipped with card readers.
“In addition to those first-line folks, you’ve got roving response teams to provide backup to any incidents,” he said.
The contractors are restricted from certain parts of the buildings, including the floor on which Bezos works in the 37-story Day 1 tower, he said.
In addition to office safeguards and security personnel paid for by Amazon, there are transportation and home protection costs that likely come out of Bezos’ own pocket.
Bezos travels on a Gulfstream G650 private jet, valued at $65 million, which he purchased through his holding company Poplar Glen in 2015.
His Seattle-area home is worth nearly $80 million, according to the King County Assessor’s office, and Bezos paid $23 million for the former Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. Securing these properties and Bezos’ numerous other estates can be costly.
“You’ll find that many individuals with significant wealth like that don’t even cross the threshold of trying to get the corporation to pay for it,” Heintze said. “They just pay for it outright.”
P.S.- The information above has been curated from Daily Beast and a few other sources.
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