The recently resigned CEO of Meta is said to have used company resources for her own interest in recent years. That is why she has been under investigation internally since last year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, lawyers for Facebook parent company Meta have been investigating the activities of Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s COO, who announced her departure in early June after fourteen years (this fall) since last fall.
The business newspaper spoke to several sources. According to them, Sandberg would have made employees of Meta work for her own foundation, lean in. That would also have happened before writing and promoting her second book.
This internal investigation may have played a role in Sandberg’s decision to leave. It remains speculation though. In recent weeks, there has also been speculation that Sandberg’s role may be shrinking as the company focuses more on the metaverse, but also that many of the scandalous issues were indirectly the result of her policies.
It is probably not the only reason, since some practices have been known for some time. For example, Sandberg received the explicit support of the board of directors in 2018 after she conducted an internal investigation into billionaire George Soros. That came after he criticized Facebook in a speech.
At the same time, the company is often extremely flexible to the personal obstacles of its top people. For example, Facebook previously paid 106 million euros ‘too much’ to regulator FTC to settle the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but also to keep CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally out of harm’s way.