German Klimenko

German Sergeyevich Klimenko (, born December 7, 1966, Moscow) is a Russian entrepreneur and owner of . He is the founder and owner of , a news aggregator based on data from social networks. Chairman of the board of the Internet Development Institute from February 2015 to December 4, 2017.

Klimenko was an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Internet development (January 4, 2016 - June 13, 2018), acting State Counselor of the Russian Federation 2nd class (since 2017), and the creator and head of the LBE banner system, , List.Ru website catalog.

Early life and education Born on December 7, 1966 in Moscow. His mother worked in automation in Promstroybank USSR, and his father was a sportsman, but after his career ended he developed problems with alcohol, which caused him and Klimenko`s mother to separate; after that she raised her son alone. As a child, he practiced pentathlon.

From 1983 to 1988, Klimenko studied at the A. F. Mozhaysky Military Engineering Red Banner Institute in Saint Petersburg, specializing as a software engineer. For further service he was sent to Kamchatka to space units in the city of Yelizovo.

Career

As a businessman In 1993, he worked as a programmer in a branch of the Irkutsk Prospector Commercial Bank (by his admission, it was thanks to his mother's connections in the banking sector), where he reached the position of deputy director. At that time he also traded MMM shares and opened several secondary trade shops. In 1996 he moved to Rossiysky Kredit Bank, where he held a similar position until 2000. Since 2023, he reclaimed ownership of the company. In 1996 he founded the legal agency Yuragentstvo LLC. As of 2024, he owns 20 percent of the company.

In June 2013, he became president of the Association for the Development of Electronic Commerce (ADEC),

On December 22, 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin approached German Klimenko with a proposal to become his advisor on Internet development. He was appointed to this position on January 4, 2016, and on June 8 of the same year, Putin awarded Klimenko the rank of Acting State Counselor of the Russian Federation 3rd class. He was relieved of his post on June 13, 2018.

In 2021, he was included in the federal list of the Russian Party of Freedom and Justice in the State Duma elections.

As a technology developer

In August 1998, he launched a directory of sites and server statistics of site traffic List.ru. In 2000 it was sold to Mail.ru for a million dollars, which launched on its basic service Top.Mail.ru.

In April 2009, he launched MediaTarget, a media-context advertising system based on Liveinternet. Klimenko later recognized the idea as a failure due to the inability to find suitable projects.

In July 2010, the first rating of Russian-language Facebook pages was created.

In January 2014, , a news aggregator based on data from social networks, was launched, displaying media notes that collected the most clicks from social networks. It was initially created on behalf of Sergey Kravtsov of Qip.ru, but after the sale of Qip.ru by RBK Group, Klimenko made it his product. By the beginning of August 2014, the Mediametrics website had about 80,000 daily users, by October 8, 2015, the audience reached 300,000 users.

Due to a brief conflict materials from the TV Rain were banned from the rating for a short time.

Illegal torrent tracker Vedomosti reported in January 2016, citing “two acquaintances” of Klimenko, without specifying their names, that he owned the torrent tracker Torrnado.ru through affiliates, and “has nothing to do” with him or his son, but admitted that he cooperated with the site. Klimenko characterizes its owners as “his good acquaintances”.

Revenue The total amount of declared income for 2015 amounted to 6 million 299 thousand rubles, for 2016 – 4 million 641 thousand rubles, for 2017 – 6 million 479 thousand rubles.

Personal life

Klimenko two children from his first marriage, Yuri, who graduated from the Higher School of Economics, and Nastya, and two children from another marriage with Maria, Sonya and Roma. After his appointment to a government position he gave control of some of his assets to Yuri.