Mystery sorrounding Hungarian firm BAC Consulting KFT, which reportedly manufactured and sold the AR-924 pagers that exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, thickened on Wednesday after a Taiwanese CEO called its financial transactions "strange."
It was Hsu Ching-kuan, CEO and founder of Gold Apollo who opened up about BAC Consulting KFT's suspectable financial dealings. To put things into context, Hsu Ching-kuan's Gold Apollo had authorized the use of its trademarked branding on the pagers manufactured and sold by BAC in certain regions. It was these pagers that reportedly exploded in Lebanon killing 12 people and wounding about 3,000 others.
ALSO READ | Gold Apollo disowns chips used by Hungarian firm BAC Consulting KFT
According to media reports, Hsu revealed that that Gold Apollo's relationship with BAC Consulting began three years ago. Elaborating on the reason why he said the Hungarian company's money transfers were "strange", Hsu said that BAC's bank account that was blocked by Gold Apollo's Taiwanese bank "at least once." He claimed that despite being headquartered in Budapest in Europe, BAC used a Middle Eastern bank account for the said transactions, CBS News said in a report.
"It was very inconvenient," he told NPR, adding: "You have to deal with these risks when doing global trade," the report quoted him as saying.
Reports confirmed that BAC Consulting KFT was registered as a company with Hungary's Ministry of Justice in May 2022.
Gold Apollo maintains that the design and manufacturing of the devices was the responsibility of BAC alone. The pagers involved in the blast were entirely different in designs used by Gold Apollo. Distancing the company from the incident and Israel, Hsu Ching-kuan mentioned that the chips found in the exploded devices wer not the ones used by Gold Apollo in its own models.
ALSO READ | How Israel's Mossad planted explosives in Hezbollah devices and detonated them remotely
"There was nothing in those devices that we had manufactured or exported to BAC," CBS News reported Hsu as saying about his company's three-year-long deal with BAC Consulting KFT.
Pager blasts shock Hezbollah, Lebanon
Thousands of Hezbollah cadres including fighters and leaders were targeted in a massive and meticulously planned attack involving pagers that exploded, killing at least nine, injuring over 2,750 people and critically injuring more than 200. The extensive explosions signal a new form of offensive action in the annals of modern warfare. Reports said the devices heated up before exploding. The Ministry of Public Health requested that “all citizens who own wireless communication devices stay away from them.”
In order to escape the sophisticated Israeli electronic and cyber warfare dragnet, Hezbollah militants had resorted to using pagers as the main means to communicate as they cannot capture sound, don’t have cameras and leave very low digital signatures.
FULL REPORT | Pagers explode across Lebanon, many Hezbollah fighters killed, thousands injured
A possible explanation is that devices containing explosives were introduced into the Hezbollah networks, which were then triggered at the same time through a sophisticated command and control channel.