A Hungary-based company remains firmly in the spotlight after the pager attacks targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Sky News looks at what we know about BAC Consulting and its Italian-born chief executive after exploding pager communication devices killed at least 37 people and wounded around 3,000 others.
Images of destroyed pagers were consistent with those made by the Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo – which says the pagers were made by BAC Consulting, which has a licence to use its brand.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the coordinated blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday.
However, a New York Times report citing three intelligence officers briefed on the operation claimed BAC Consulting was part of an Israeli front.
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What do we know about BAC Consulting?
The company’s CEO has denied making the pagers and said she is “just the intermediate” – while a Hungarian government spokesman said the pagers delivered to Hezbollah were never in Hungary.
According to online brochures for BAC Consulting, the company first “opened its doors” in 2010 and established an office in Budapest.
The brochure, found on the CEO’s LinkedIn page, says with more than a “decade of consulting experience” BAC provides “strategic guidance in our diverse fields of operations”.
It lists the address for BAC Consulting at an address in the Palace District of Budapest. However, the head office for the company is located a 20-minute drive away in the northeast of Budapest.
A woman who emerged on Wednesday from the Budapest building housing the company’s headquarters said the location is used as a service that provides addresses to companies.
BAC Consulting is listed among other companies. Pic: AP
What does the company do?
Sky News obtained records for BAC Consulting from the Hungarian company registry. The document says it was registered in May 2022 as a management consultancy business.
While its main activity is registered as ‘business consultancy’ it has a broad range of 117 other activities listed – from retail sales to manufacturing.
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Company records for BAC Consulting from the Hungarian company registry
CEO: ‘I don’t make the pagers’
The documents say its managing director is 49-year-old Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono – and her LinkedIn page also lists her as the CEO. The profile says she has been CEO in Budapest since 2019.
Company records for BAC Consulting list Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono as the managing director. Credit: Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono/LinkedIn
Sky correspondent Dan Whitehead travelled to Ujpest – a suburb of Budapest – to an apartment belonging to Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono’s family. One neighbour described her as a “highly educated” woman and said he hadn’t seen her in several years.
Sky News has tried to contact Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono but received no response.
But asked about the pagers and the explosions by NBC News, Sky News’ US partner, she said: “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong.”
It was not clear what connection, if any, she or BAC had to the attack.
Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono’s LinkedIn page says she has previously worked at a number of companies including UNESCO-IHP, the UN’s atomic watchdog agency (IAEA), the NSPCC and the European Commission.
The BAC Consulting brochure on her LinkedIn page says Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) and University College London (UCL).
According to her other social media pages, Ms Barsony-Arcidiacono is Italian but lives in Budapest.
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‘No manufacturing site in Hungary’
On Wednesday, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said national security services were cooperating with international partners.
On X he said authorities confirmed 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,” he added.
Bulgarian firm facing questions too
Gold Apollo says the company had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years but did not provide evidence of the contract.
But BAC is not the only company facing questions.
Hsu Ching-Kuang, founder of Apollo Gold, says the pagers were made in Europe under licence. Pic: Reuters
Hungarian news site Telex reported that the sale of pagers was actually facilitated by a Sofia-based company called Norta Global Ltd, citing sources.
The Bulgarian state security agency said it did not detect any shipments of the suspected pagers on Bulgarian territory but added it would investigate a company thought to have links to the sale of pagers to Hezbollah.
Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the link to Norta. Company officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.