Facebook spent more than $8.8m on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's security and personal travel last year

A proxy statement revealed that social media giant, Facebook spent more than $8.8million last year on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's security and personal travel just last year.

Zuckerberg's travel expenses and security detail were included in a report for the United States Security and Exchange Commission before the company's annual shareholders meeting next month. The report showed that $8.8million was used for Zuckerberg's travel and security in 2017 alone. That was on top of the $1 Zuckerberg earned as his salary for the year.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg takes only $1 as his official salary. Most of his income comes from his Facebook stock which is worth almost $24billion.

Out of the $8.8million, spent on Zuckerberg's travel in 2017, $7.3 million was used for personal security costs and $1.5million was used to travel by a private plane.

"Because of the high visibility of our company, our compensation & governance committee has authorized an 'overall security program' for Mr Zuckerberg to address safety concerns due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as our founder, Chairman, and CEO," the company wrote in its report.

"We require these security measures for the company's benefit because of the importance of Mr Zuckerberg to Facebook, and we believe that the costs of this overall security program are appropriate and necessary."

As opposed to Facebook, Amazon spent $1.6million on CEO Jeff Bezos' travel in 2016, USA Today reported. But Bezos also received an annual salary of $81,840. The company has yet to release its 2017 report.  Also, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, only spent $317,325 on his personal security in 2017.

"This is the largest amount I’ve seen in the five years I’ve been looking at the Fortune 100 studies," Dan Marcec, Equilar's director of content and communications, said to the Washington Post in regards to Zuckerberg's 2017 figure.