Lebanon pagers blast: All about Hungarian maker BAC Consulting that wounded hundreds of Hezbollah members

From its digital persona, BAC Consulting – the Hungarian company which allegedly manufactured communication devices that exploded and wounded over 2,800 people in Lebanon – gives the impression of a company desperate to do anything that comes its way to make money.

The pager devices, popular in the early 2000s, blew up simultaneously on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least nine people and sending shockwaves across the world. Reports say Israel placed a small amount of high-grade explosive inside the devices before it reached Lebanon a few months ago.

Earlier, India Today Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team identified the pager’s manufacturer as Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which later said the devices were made by a Hungary-based BAC Consulting KFT (Pvt Ltd) under an agreement that authorised it to manufacture and sell the AR-924 pagers under brand name Apollo.

Official data accessed by India Today shows BAC was founded in May 2022. Its LinkedIn page offers services in the areas of international relations, telecommunication, environment, development and innovation, monitoring systems for external aid intervention.

As per data available on the website of Hungary’s Ministry of Justice, BAC works virtually in every field you can think of – from bread baking, book, software & computer games publishing, jewellery production, farming, cloth retailing to petroleum extraction and data processing.

In what appears to be a reference to Gold Apollo, BAC website boasts of an “international technology cooperation” for the sale of “telecommunications products” that entails scaling up “a business from Asia” to new markets in developing countries.

It also claims to be an information coordinator on the European Institute of Innovation and Technology of the European Commission in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Latvia and Lithuania. BAC puts its employee strength to 2-10 people.

The company is headed by 49-year-old Italian-origin Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, who describes herself as “strategic advisor in innovation and internal affairs”. Cristiana says she earned a PhD in Physics from University College, London and a diploma in politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

She claims to have worked with a number of international organisations like UNESCO and International Atomic Energy Agency in Europe, Middle East and Africa over the years.

The BAC Consulting CEO has also published four research papers on physics and climate change. Cristiana regularly posts sketch artwork on her Instagram profile and offers consultancy services in arts and culture as well.

She also posted content that aligned with Hungary’s far-right PM Viktor Orbán. In a LinkedIn post a month ago, Cristiana called Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky’s government a “nazi regime”.

Why does Hezbollah use pagers?

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group in Lebanon, uses pager devices to avoid tracking and intelligence gathering by Israeli agencies. As it entered into a limited conflict with Israel over the Gaza war, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah asked his cadre in February this year to shun the use of mobile phones and instead use pagers.

Pager devices don’t have GPS capabilities, microphones and cameras. They can only receive alphanumeric messages.

Reports said a small quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, was placed in the devices before they were shipped to Lebanon.

There are varying opinions on how the explosive was triggered remotely. While some experts said the explosions could have been caused by raising the temperature of pagers’ lithium-ion batteries, other reports in international media said the Mossad might have placed a microchip and activated it by a code sent to all affected devices.