Things are going from bad to worse for Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Following heavy criticism that Zuckerburg allowed the personal data of 50 million Facebook users to be misused by data-mining company Cambridge Analytica, it has now been revealed that he has dumped vast amounts of his Facebook stock in the weeks leading up to this scandal.
With inside knowledge that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was going to break, Zuckerberg may have used his inside knowledge to directly profit by selling shares that he knew would fall sharply in price.
In the two weeks before the scandal broke, Zuckerberg reportedly sold 1.14 million shares, the most insider selling for any public company in the last three months, according to Argus Research's Vickers Weekly Insider report.
Zuckerberg is claiming that the share sale was pre-planned to fund "philanthropic efforts," namely to provide a massive cash injection for his so-called charitable foundation, which many financial experts believe is a way for him to keep control of his money while avoiding tax.
The truth is that Zuckerberg has known about problems over Facebook's unethical use of user data for years, with the Cambridge Analytica case just being the latest in a long line.
All his transactions in recent years, from setting up his Foundation in 2015 to the most recent share dumping, can be plausibly interpreted as getting his money out of Facebook to avoid taxes and the inevitable sharp drop in Facebook's share price when scrutiny of his flawed business model started to bite.
All his transactions in recent years, from setting up his Foundation in 2015 to the most recent share dumping, can be plausibly interpreted as getting his money out of Facebook to avoid taxes and the inevitable sharp drop in Facebook's share price when scrutiny of his flawed business model started to bite.
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