Pager blasts: "Mossad companies" in Budapest and Sofia appear to be shell companies, not front firms

Although by now she has vanished into thin air, following the pager attacks on Hezbollah fighters earlier in the week, Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, managing director of the Hungarian company BAC Consulting Ltd was still seen in Budapest shortly after the news of the blasts broke. According to acquaintances, she appeared tense and nervous.

AP recently claimed that she is now being protected by the Hungarian secret services. However, when contacted by Telex, the Office for the Defense of the Constitution denied this. They wrote that "in Hungary, the scope of persons under the protection of state security is defined by law" and that the "lady in question" does not belong to the protected category and therefore cannot be protected. They added that the Hungarian national security services have been investigating the case since Wednesday, and that Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono had been interviewed several times. "We will keep the international partner organisations and the National Security Committee of the Parliament informed about the results of the investigation. So far, the investigation has made it clear that the pagers were never in Hungary, and that no Hungarian company or Hungarian professional was involved in their manufacture or modification." – they wrote.

The Indian-Norwegian Rinson Jose, who owns the other company implicated in the "pager blasts" case, the Bulgarian Norta Global Ltd., may have taken off as soon as the role of BAC Consulting was publicly revealed. By the time we published our report on Norta Global's involvement on Telex on Wednesday, Rinson was already unreachable.

Israel carried out a historically unprecedented intelligence operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Tuesday. Thousands of the terrorist organisation's pagers were simultaneously detonated, and on Wednesday hundreds of transponders were used in a repeat of the large-scale attack. The series of attacks left dozens dead and thousands injured.

The world is still trying to decipher the channels through which thousands of technically modified devices, specifically converted into remote-controlled bombs, were successfully inserted into the Lebanese terrorist organisation. From the information we have so far, it appears that Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono and Rinson Jose were stooges in a wider network of companies that allowed the Israeli secret service to set up a paper trail for the supply of the pagers that were later detonated.

The New York Times published an article on the background to the operation on Wednesday night. The paper's Israeli sources claimed that the small amount of explosive material that was remotely detonated on Tuesday was not built into the pagers after manufacture, but during production. In fact, according to the newspaper, Mossad had set up several shell companies nominally selling pagers even before Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah had ordered their purchase.

According to intelligence sources interviewed by the newspaper, one of these is BAC Consulting, the company registered in Hungary. Norta Global was not mentioned in the New York Times article, Telex was the first to report on the Bulgarian company’s involvement on Wednesday evening.

Single-use companies

Although the international press has described BAC Consulting as a front company, the two companies that have been identified so far in the case do not seem to be intelligence front companies in the classic sense of the word. They are in fact so-called "shell companies", but they could regardless be linked to the Israeli secret service.

There is a difference between a shell company – or, to put it another way, a disposable company – and a secret service front company. A well-run front company is built up by the secret service over several years. These companies do actual business, they make a profit just like a normal company, they serve their real clients and partners, who have no idea about the company’s background.

In addition to their legitimate, genuine activities, and under their cover, front companies assist in covert operations. The front companies are set up, managed and kept under full control by secret operatives, and are not intended to be sacrificed in an operation. On the contrary.

In contrast, shell companies serve a different function. They usually have stooges register them, i.e. people who have no connection to the secret services, except that they are agents of a secret service operative. Most commonly, however, they are practically complete outsiders who are unaware that they are in fact instruments in a secret service operation. They are just being used.

The outsiders can be agents recruited by Mossad as well as individuals approached by the secret services who have no connection to them but are interested in easy money. They sign whatever is put before them, they don't ask too many questions. It is common for the secret services to seek out prospective stooges with some kind of legend ( a fictional story), and there’s usually someone eager to make easy money who gets hooked. The stooges only provide their names for the shell companies, they themselves do not carry out any activity, nor do the companies under their names.

Stooges: puppets to be sacrificed

According to her CV, Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, 49, who claims to speak seven languages, appears to be well-educated, but her former colleagues and acquaintances say they can see her taking on a similar role. In this case, it seems that she only had to give her name and did not have to put any work into running the company.

Of course, in an operation where a company claims to be manufacturing electronic equipment or working in the IT sector, the real background of a stooge matters. If, for example, they are educated, have degrees, are well-versed in international relations, there is no risk involved in someone doing a background check on them. And the backgrounds of Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono and Rinson Jose are both quite convincing in this respect.

Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono's mother told the AP that her daughter was born in Sicily, graduated from the University of Catania with a degree in physics and then went on to obtain a PhD in political science from University College London. She interned at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, worked in Paris and returned to Budapest in 2016 to care for her elderly grandmother. The executives at the helm of shell companies – the stooges – often don't even know who their clients are. Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono herself told NBC News that she was just an intermediary.

The Budapest-based BAC Consulting came into the picture following the attacks because although the pagers were the product named AR-924 of the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, its CEO said that BAC Consulting Ltd. had bought the rights to sell the pagers in certain regions under their brand name, and that BAC was also responsible for the design, manufacturing and distribution – at least according to Gold Apollo.

The executives of Gold Apollo were familiar with BAC Consulting, they signed a contract with them, but they did not actually negotiate with Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono. They haven’t heard of Norta Global at all.

So far, only a fraction of the mysterious chain of firms is known.

• The original manufacturer of the detonated AR-924 pagers was the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo.
• On paper, it was the Hungarian company BAC Consulting that had a contract with Gold Apollo.
• However, as Telex understands, BAC Consulting was in contact with Norta Global Ltd. of Bulgaria, which was likely the company behind BAC. But the chain of companies does not end there, although the names of the other companies involved still remain unknown.

These "disposable companies" are stacked on top of each other like the layers of an onion. It is the top layer of the onion that is most clearly visible, but the next layer, which is linked to it in one way or another, is less so. In the Israeli operation, it was BAC Consulting that was the top peel of the onion, and it is this company that is now on display.

The architects of the pager blast operation, the Israeli secret services, must therefore have known that the first company to be exposed after the attacks would be BAC Consulting Ltd. of Budapest, registered under the name of Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono. Despite this, they did not evacuate her from Hungary immediately after the attacks, and not even after the Taiwanese company had disclosed information about the Budapest firm. If the Israelis had evacuated her, she would not have been seen around Budapest on Wednesday. This is another indication that she was not closely linked to the Israelis, otherwise they would not have put her on the front line and would not have allowed her life to be in danger.

The fact that she was visibly stressed and tense on Wednesday, according to witnesses Telex spoke with also suggests that she may have been a mere pawn in this story, who accepted the role of CEO for money.

Also, it is safer for the Israeli secret service to put simple stooges at the helm of fake companies in an operation of this magnitude. They have limited knowledge, so even if they are exposed, they cannot provide relevant information that would put the real perpetrators of the operation at risk.

The Bulgarian thread

According to our information, the Bulgarian company, Norta Global, named by Telex's source may have played a role in the second line of the chain of companies involved in the Israeli intelligence operation, but there are more and more indications that it was also a shell company just like BAC Consulting. One such indication is that it did not have any real activities and was registered with a headquarters service provider in Sofia just like BAC was in Budapest.

The Bulgarians launched an investigation after Telex’s article was published. Although Bulgarian public media, citing a national security source, claimed that €1.6 million had been transferred from Norta Global to the Hungarian company, official sources have not confirmed this.

Officially, the Bulgarian National Security Service only revealed that Norta Global had no real activity, that it was not the company that manufactured the pagers, and that there was no evidence that the devices had ever been in Bulgaria. The Hungarian government has made the same claim about BAC Consulting.

The reason why BAC Consulting, which was the first company to be exposed in this case was founded in Budapest may perhaps be that in case of a scandal following the blasts, the Israelis could count on this not to cause diplomatic tension between Hungary and Israel, as the two countries have an excellent relationship.

However, the communication of both the Bulgarian and the Hungarian government has understandably been aimed at pushing the story away from themselves as much as possible. On the one hand, this is understandable in light of the fact that the Israelis most probably carried out the operation in complete secrecy, without involving the agencies of any other country, and on the other hand, if it were to be revealed that the pagers were produced in one of the two countries, this would pose a serious national security risk for Bulgaria and/or Hungary.

The Israeli intelligence services have a history of carrying out covert operations abroad without the knowledge of local security services and governments.

Furthermore, it is significant that the Hungarian company only bought the rights to manufacture the pagers and was likely linked to the Bulgarian company in this context, which means that both companies (and probably other companies in the chain that are not known yet) were only needed to provide the paperwork for the devices. This means that neither company had to have physical contact with the products, and that the pagers could have been manufactured anywhere in the world, even in Israel. So even if the press or the investigating national security agencies could eventually trace the chain of companies, they would probably only get to the puppets, the stooges, and not to those who directed the operation.

Likewise, given the nature of the case, it is also possible that the Bulgarian and Hungarian company executives, Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono and Rinson Jose, never met or even spoke to each other – they merely did what they were asked to do.

However, the very nature of their companies meant that they had to know that they were just stooges, so the question instead is whether they were on the same level in that role. The founding dates of Norta Global in Sofia and BAC Consulting in Budapest are almost identical: Norta Global Ltd. was founded on 14 April 2022, and BAC Consulting was established shortly afterwards, in May.

The companies of the Indian-Norwegian Rinson Jose

The owner of the Bulgarian company, Rinson Jose, is 39 years old, presumably a dual Indian-Norwegian citizen. He founded Norta Global in Sofia in April 2022. Although the founder of the company was originally registered as Hose Rinsan, it is likely the same person.

Unlike his Hungarian "business partner" Bársony-Arcidiacono, who runs BAC Consulting, Rinson appears to be more experienced in founding companies and is probably more at home in the corporate world, at least according to information openly available about him.

According to international company databases, the Indian-Norwegian man also has interests in Norway. For example, he is in part associated with the India Sports and Cultural Association, the International Students’ Union at Hioa, and a company called Nortalink Jose. He is the chairman of the board of the Oslo-based company India Sports and Cultural Association. This company was founded in October 2023. Prior to this, he had holdings in several other Norwegian companies.

A person of the same name, with the same personal details, also appears in the Indian company database, connected to a company called Global Sky Cargo. Unfortunately, the website of the Indian company, which is described as engaged in transport, storage and communication, does not provide any information on its management or ownership and apart from a few stock photos, there are no pictures on the site either. We did contact the company by telephone, but the man on the other end of the line spoke such bad English that communication proved impossible, so we were unable to find out whether one of the owners was the same Rinson Jose who had given his name to Norta Global.

What is true for BAC Consulting is also valid for Norta Global. It does not seem to have been set up with the purpose of doing any real business. Founded in April 2022, the company claims to be a project management company – but its online presence has been rather poor. Its now inaccessible website – registered at around the same time as the company was founded – is a simple Wordpress site. It does not provide any specifics about what the company actually does – there was only some generic text. The contact button takes one to a Facebook account called NortaLink – with both connected to Rinson José, at least in name.

According to information available on the internet, Rinson has been working for DN Media Group as a senior IT executive since March 2022. Although he has been unreachable since the pager bomb attacks, we have been able to establish that he is indeed employed by DN Media Group, although his colleagues have not heard from him for some time. Some people believe he was travelling abroad for a conference.

Exactly what Rinson has been doing at DN Media Group until now can only be deduced from the information on his social networking site. According to this, he worked in digitalisation and automation, and was employed by the same company before 2022, but as head of account management. He may have worked for Norwegian IT companies in the past, but there is no indication that he is skilled or even competent in the production of hardware (such as pagers).

NortaLink, which his name is tied to – at least on paper –, provides IT services and consultancy among other things, but we have not been able to verify the actual operation of the company. It's a telling sign that although the company appears to have between 11 and 50 employees, it does not actually have any active employees other than Rinson Jose. The Facebook page associated with this company was active between 2017 and 2021, but only general, vague information was posted. And NortaLink's LinkedIn page directs people to the now inaccessible norta.no website. According to this, the company is engaged in software consultancy.