Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spent $13,000 (Rs 11.3 lakh) on lingerie for herself and her 26-year-old female assistant on a trip to Europe, a new memoir has claimed.
Ms Sandberg also invited the assistant to “come to bed” on a private jet on the way home, Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook employee, claimed in her new book titled ‘Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.’
Ms Wynn-Williams spent six years at the company before quitting in 2017.
According to Ms Wynn-Williams’ memoir, Ms Sandberg and her aide switched between sleeping in each other’s laps and stroking each other’s hair during a long car ride throughout Europe.
Ms Sandberg allegedly told Wynn-Williams to buy lingerie for both of them and the total cost was $13,000, according to a book review in The New York Times on Monday.
The book review claimed that Ms Sandberg got extremely upset when Ms Wynn-Williams refused to join her in “the only bed on the plane” during a private jet journey home.
A Meta representative, however, rubbished the claims and called them “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations.”
The representative noted that Ms Wynn-Williams was fired eight years ago for “poor performance and toxic behaviour.”
An internal inquiry at the time ruled that Wynn-Williams’ claims of harassment were “misleading and unfounded.”
They further implied that anti-Facebook campaigners have since paid Ms Wynn-Williams, portraying the book as a continuation of their goal.
Ms Wynn-Williams characterised CEO Mark Zuckerberg as someone who went from being obsessed with engineering and coding to becoming an executive enamoured with politics and popularity, per The Times.
The author compared Ms Sandberg and Mr Zuckerberg to the “careless people” from ‘The Great Gatsby’ – those who cause mayhem and leave others to bear the consequences.
Earlier in January, a judge sanctioned Sheryl Sandberg for deleting emails linked to the lawsuit over Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy issue while she was instructed to preserve the data.
The judge stated that there was evidence that Ms Sandberg deleted messages that were probably related to the shareholder litigation and used a personal account under a false identity.
