HS in Hungary|Members of the extremist organization Hezbollah were wounded in various parts of Lebanon on Tuesday after the paging devices they were carrying exploded.
Budapest / Helsinki
Taiwanese The manufacturer of Gold Apollo says the Hungarian company made the pagers for the extremist organization Hezbollah, which Israel allegedly claimed blasted in a coordinated fashion on Tuesday.
Members of the Shiite Islamist extremist organization Hezbollah were wounded in various parts of Lebanon on Tuesday after the paging devices they were carrying exploded. Thousands have reportedly been wounded and at least nine people have died.
The name of the company is BAC Consulting, and it can be found in the Hungarian business register. The address given by the company is located in the 14th district of Budapest.
HS visited at the address listed by the company on Wednesday morning.
There are mailboxes with the names of several companies hanging at the gate. BAC Consulting’s name is not marked on the box, but the woman who came to the gate says that the company rents a mailbox in the house.
“Physically, the company has never been here,” says the woman.
“I don’t know anything about the company.”
The woman says that the company receives mail about once a month. Then he disappears back into the house, not wanting to talk to reporters anymore.
Around 11 am local time, two plainclothes policemen entered the office building. They confirmed they were police but did not want to comment to the media.
Corporate there is no answer from the listed Hungarian number. The company’s website did not load on Wednesday morning.
American television channel NBC reached the CEO of BAC Consulting Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiaconon to the phone on Wednesday. This confirmed that his company had cooperated with Gold Apollo.
NBC asked Bársony-Arcidiacono about pagers and explosions.
“I don’t make pagers. I’m just an intermediary. I think there is some mistake here,” Bársony-Arcidiacono replied.
HS has also tried to reach the CEO of BAC.
On Wednesday, Gold Apollo did not want to comment further on the matter and referred to the ongoing investigation.
A spokesperson for Taiwan’s Ministry of Commerce wondered to NBC whether the exploded pagers could have been manufactured by someone other than Gold Apollo or companies using its brand. “Did someone else make them and just call them Gold Apollo? This is currently being investigated by the authorities,” the spokesman told NBC.
According to the annual report submitted by BAC itself, the company’s assets in 2023 were around 290,000 euros. A year earlier in 2022, the wealth was clearly lower, around 33,000 euros. The amounts refer to a fairly small company.
News agency According to Reuters, the exploded paging devices would have been delivered to Lebanon at the beginning of the year.
According to Reuters’ Lebanese security source, Israel’s Mossad intelligence service had installed explosives in 5,000 pagers already during their production phase.
Reuters previously reported that according to a representative of the device manufacturer Gold Apollo, the devices are not manufactured or sold by them, but the paging devices in question were manufactured by BAC Consulting, which has the right to use the Gold Apollo brand on paging devices.
Several media reports that the model of at least some of the devices is AR-924.
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