World's second-richest man Bernard Arnault sells private jet so climate activists can't track him
The world's second-richest man has said he has sold his private jet
so "no one can see where I go" after being tracked by climate activists
on Twitter.
Bernard Arnault, the boss of luxury goods company LVMH
- known for Moet, Louis Vuitton and Hennessy - has a net worth of
$152bn (£134bn), according to Forbes' real-time billionaires list,
surpassing Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
Accounts such as @i_fly_Bernard and @laviondebernard had sprung up on
Twitter to track the private jet of Mr Arnault and other billionaires
to reveal the amount of pollution they cause.
"Indeed, with all
these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it," the 73-year-old
French business magnate told France's Radio Classique.
"The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes."
His son, Antoine Arnault, 45, said in the same interview that other
people knowing where the company jet is could give away key information
to competitors.
"It's not very good that our competitors can know where we are at any moment," he said.
"That can give ideas, it can also give leads, clues."
Bernard Arnault is not the only public figure to have his carbon footprint scrutinised on social media.
A teenager set up a Twitter account last year to track Elon Musk's private jet.
The SpaceX and Tesla
chief described the tracker, which uses publicly available air-traffic
information, as a potential threat to his safety - and offered the
youngster $5k to shut down the @ElonJet account which was rejected.
