British-educated entrepreneur denies manufacturing explosive pagers

A British-educated entrepreneur has denied manufacturing the pagers that wounded hundreds of Hezbollah fighters in a simultaneous explosion on Tuesday.

A Hungarian company alleged to have made the devices is run by Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, who studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) between 2015 and 2017.

The pagers, used by the Lebanese terror group to communicate securely, wounded more than 3,000 people and killed at least 12 in an audacious Israeli attack reportedly triggered because Mossad feared its plot had been exposed.

About three grams of explosives are reported to have been placed into the AR-924 pagers in a sophisticated supply chain infiltration.

The Taiwanese firm whose branding was on the devices said on Wednesday that they were manufactured in Hungary.

Gold Apollo said “the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility” of Budapest-based BAC Consulting KFT, which was authorised to use its brand as part of a three-year-old licensing agreement.

But Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono, the chief executive of BAC Consulting, said: “I do not make the pagers. I am just the intermediary. I think you got it wrong,” when reached on the phone by NBC News.

Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono, who owns 100 per cent of the company, is listed as its sole managing director.

Since studying at LSE she worked for Unesco, according to her LinkedIn page. “I have with love devoted myself to science and development”, she wrote on the page.

She had also earlier completed a degree in sustainable development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She also recently worked with the European Commission as an “evaluation expert”, her LinkedIn states.

After calling a press conference at Gold Apollo’s new Taipei headquarters, Hsu Ching-kuang, the company’s chairman, told reporters the firm was a victim of the incident, that he planned to sue BAC and that he did not know how the pagers could be rigged to explode.

He said that payments had come through the Middle East but did not elaborate further.

“The remittance was very strange,” he said. “We may not be a large company, but we are a responsible one,” he added. “This is very embarrassing.”

On the BAC consulting website, which had been taken down “for maintenance” by Wednesday morning, the company said it was involved in “bridging technology and innovation from Asia”. It said the firm helps telecommunications businesses in Asia scale up to reach new markets.

The company’s address was registered to a two-storey building in Budapest, with the company’s name posted on the glass door on an A4 sheet.

When reporters from Hungary’s Telex website rang the bell on the building, a woman answered.

She said she was only there as a headquarters manager and that no one from BAC Consulting was in the building.

The company only receives post once a month and she is responsible for collecting it, she said.

There are several other businesses registered at the address as well as BAC Consulting, which appears to be named after its CEO’s initials.,

Described as a micro-enterprise in the Hungarian press, BAC Consulting was founded in 2022, according to local company information.

Hungarian media reported there was no sign it manufactured anything, with its main activity being management consulting.

Other registered activities include book and newspaper publishing and oil production but computer programming and other information technology services are also listed.

Its registered capital was £6,600. The company made £549,000 in net sales in 2022, Világgazdaság reported. In 2023, that dropped to about £449,000.

After tax that year it made a profit of £38,466, up from £12,820 the previous year. The money was not taken out as a dividend and placed in retained earnings.

The Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orban, is a staunch supporter of Israel in its fight against Hamas.

Zoltan Kovacs, Mr Orban’s international spokesman, said: “Authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary.

“It has one manager registered at its declared address, and the referenced devices have never been in Hungary.

“During further investigations, Hungarian national security services are cooperating with all relevant international partner agencies and organisations.”

In 2021, Mr Orban’s government confirmed it had bought a powerful military-grade spyware tool called Pegasus, which was made by the Israel-based NSO Group.

Hungarian journalists sued the government after being targeted by the spyware, which infiltrates phones to collect personal and location data and can surreptitiously control the phone’s microphones and cameras.

Mr Orban’s close ties with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, led to Israel’s qualifying football matches for Euro 2024 being played in Hungary after UEFA suspended home games in the country because of security concerns.

In February, Hungary blocked a formal communique by EU foreign ministers calling on Israel not to attack Rafah. The message was sent informally on behalf of the 26 other ministers.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for the sophisticated remote attack, which has raised fears that Israel’s war on Hamas could escalate into a regional conflict.

The group used pagers to dodge intensive Israeli surveillance on Lebanese mobile phone networks.

Danny Yatom, the former chief of Mossad, told The Telegraph that whoever is behind the pager attack would have had to “put their hands” on the devices before arriving in Lebanon.

“The organisation that is behind this showed a very high level of sophisticated technology, very accurate intelligence and high level of professionalism in the operational array,” Mr Yatom said.