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.

Woman under investigation for torture and murder of French girl, 12, whose body was found in plastic case in Paris

British woman dies after being shot during wild boar hunt in France

French government orders fuel depot strikers back to work amid union showdown

“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.

Earlier this year the University of Florida student asked Mr Musk for $50k, which the entrepreneur and world’s richest man, declined.

Related posts:

Former Unilever veteran Banga lined up to lead government agency UKGI British engineering firm agree £6.3bn takeover by US tech giant Shell plans to install 50,000 electric vehicle charging points across UK Banking tech provider ThoughtMachine lands ‘unicorn’ status with new funding Bank of England names successor to Andy Haldane as chief economist Wizz Air gives flight crews December deadline for COVID jab Ryanair sees passenger numbers recover to three-quarters of pre-pandemic level Shell boss bags 26% leap in annual pay package after COVID oil price recovery Energy chiefs beg Sunak for more financial support Britons cannot expect pay rises to keep up with cost of living, Treasury warns Pfizer fined for overcharging NHS for life-saving epilepsy drug Airlines must treat passengers better when flights disrupted, say regulators