Hannah Smith suicide: Ask.fm's party-loving co-founders Mark and Ilja Terebin making millions from misery Mark and Ilja Terebin are refusing to discussing Ask.fm's role in Hannah Smith's suicide But a whistleblower claims they are aware of the potential harm caused by the website He says they are more interested in the £5million a year in advertising revenue By Nick Fagge Staring confidently into the camera, these are the men who have made millions putting "profits before welfare" with their infamous Ask.fm website. Yesterday, brothers Mark and Ilja Terebin, who are pictured with one of their tech-savvy partners, were in hiding, each refusing to discuss their website's role in Hannah Smith's suicide on Friday. But a whistleblower who worked at the site's headquarters in Riga, Latvia's capital, claims his former bosses are aware of the harm caused by Ask.fm but are more interested in the £5million a year they are making in advertising revenue. Partners, from left: Marks Terebins, Oskars Liepiøö, Ilja Terebins of the Ask.fm website He told the Daily Mail: "They don't care what happens to the children. No one in this project cares. They have more than enough resources to moderate the site and get rid of the vile things that are written. They believe the site's popularity is down to the fact some young people want to write anonymously about others. And they believe if they closed down that facility then they would lose customers and therefore money. The site provides the perfect opportunity for "trolling" because contact with users can be made anonymously. The website claims to have "50 moderators monitoring 30 million questions and answers a day" but the whistleblower, who does not wish to be named, said he "never saw any moderation." Misery: The controversial Ask.fm website which has been blamed for the deaths of four UK children "Most of the users are teenagers," he said. It is believed that teenagers find it easier to ask questions if they are able to do so anonymously. But this anonymity has created a place where anyone can write nasty and dirty things about children. That really bothered me and that is why I left the company. There is a philosophy that the internet should be completely free from regulation but it has gone too far at Ask.fm. While I worked there we became aware that some teenagers had committed suicide because of things that were said on the site, but still the bosses refused to do anything. They have put profits before welfare. Victim: Hannah Smith, 14, has killed herself after being bullied by anonymous trolls online. Ask.fm bosses have refused to discuss their website's part in her death Party-loving founders Mark and Ilja Terebin are the sons of a wealthy former Soviet Red Army officer and they used family money to bankroll the online enterprise in 2010 before being joined by three partners with technical knowledge - Oskars Liepins, Valerijs Vesnakovs and Klavs Sinka. They copied the format of a successful American question and answer network to create Ask.fm. Initially it limped along employing a handful of technical staff until 2011, when the site took off almost overnight. In less than two years it has become a global social networking sensation and now has over 60 million registered users worldwide and is raking in at least £16,000 a day in advertising revenue. They moved into state-of-the-art offices in the heart of Latvia's capital and employed teams of highly-trained computer technicians. Charming and good-looking, the brothers are described as "inseparable." A friend said: "Mark and Ilja are always together and share a love of the good life." The older of the brothers Ilja, 35, is CEO and lives in an opulent home in the trendy coastal resort of Jarmala, some 20 miles from the capital. Mark, 29, lives in an upmarket apartment in the centre of Riga and has only recently settled down after years of "serious partying." He has recently become engaged to a glamorous Russian, Natasha Dovgjalo, who is from Moscow. Last year Mark attracted huge criticism for comments he made following the death of two Irish teenagers, Ciara Pugsley, 15, and Erin Gallagher, 13, who both committed suicide after suffering abuse on the Ask.fm site. He claimed: "Of course there is a problem with cyber-bullying in social media. Under fire: Mark Terebin faced criticism over comments he made last year regarding the deaths of Erin Gallagher, left, and Ciara Pugsley, right But as far as we can see we only have this problem in Ireland and in the United Kingdom most of all, trust me. There are no complaints regarding cyber-bullying from parents, children or other sources in other countries. It seems that children are crueller in these countries (Ireland and the United Kingdom). He later said: "It's not about the site, the problem is about education, about moral values that were devaluated lately. "Ask.fm is just a tool which helps people to communicate with each other, same as any other social network, same as phone, same as piece of paper and pen," he wrote. Terebin also told a Finnish journalist: "Kids lack attention, mainly because parents are doing other things such as watching TV, drinking beer and reading the tabloids. When they come to sites like these, they start trolling themselves so that their peers start protecting them. In this absurd way, they get the attention.