Hungarian-Italian woman implicated in pager blasts turned contracts and invoices over to authorities

The Constitution Protection Office has interviewed the managing director of BAC Consulting Kft, the Hungarian company involved in the case of Hezbollah’s exploding pagers, the Hungarian-Italian dual citizen Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, several times. During the course of these interviews she handed over documents to the authorities, Telex has learned from sources familiar with the background of the Hungarian part of the case, which has generated international attention.

According to our information, the documents in Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono's possession included invoices, receipts and contracts generated during the deal. These paint the same picture that the New York Times has previously described based on Israeli intelligence sources: that there was a network of several (front) companies behind the acquisition, sale and production of the pagers.

Thousands of pagers were detonated on Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria early last week, followed by hundreds of walkie-talkies being detonated on Wednesday. Most analysts believe that Israel was behind the attack of an unprecedented scale, but as usual, the Jewish state has not claimed responsibility.

The leadership of Hezbollah, the influential local terrorist organisation/political party/shadow state began distributing the devices to its members after serious concerns were raised that Israel, the world leader in cyber warfare, was monitoring and tracking Hezbollah's activities via mobile phones.

The license to the detonated pagers is held by a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, but its leader named a Hungarian company, the Budapest-based BAC Consulting as having a contract with them, and said that the Hungarian firm was responsible for the production and distribution of the pagers.

Telex has previously reported that, in addition to BAC Consulting, a Bulgarian company, Norta Global Ltd, registered in Sofia, is also involved in the case, but its Norwegian-Indian owner has now disappeared and is nowhere to be found. After Telex's article was published last week, the Bulgarian authorities launched an investigation revealing that the pagers had never been in Bulgaria, and they also were not manufactured there. However, the Bulgarians admitted that Norta Global Ltd. had transferred money to BAC Consulting Ltd.

According to our information, during her hearings, Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiaconio also spoke about Norta Global and its role.

We understand that Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told her interviewers that it was in fact Norta Global Ltd. that placed the orders for the pagers, and that the devices were delivered directly from Hong Kong to the customer, so BAC Consulting was not the one to pay the customs duty, and the pagers were never in Hungary.

It is therefore more and more probable that both the Bulgarian and the Hungarian shell companies were only needed for the operation in order to enable the Israeli secret service to covertly pay for the pagers. According to our information, the authorities also concluded that Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono was just a stooge who did not know the real background of the transaction, nor what the pagers were actually for. She also did not know the route on which the devices were transported and where they were actually stored.

As far as we know, from what Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono told the authorities and from the documents she handed over, it was possible to establish that the shipment most likely went from Taiwan to Hong Kong and from there into Lebanon.

The Taiwanese Gold Apollo had previously stressed in a press release and in their CEO's statement that in practice they had nothing to do with the production and sale of the pagers, and named BAC Consulting as their business partner.

It is therefore still not known exactly where the pagers were manufactured, and Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono was not able to provide any information on this either.

The transactions between Norta Global and BAC Consulting were partly revealed by the woman's account and the telltale bank transactions. As for the details of the money transfers between the two companies, we were able to find out that Norta Global transferred more than one million euros to the Budapest company in several installments between 10 March and 7 June 2023, while the Hungarian company did not make a single transfer to the Bulgarian company. On the other hand, BAC made dozens of transfers to Gold Apollo in Taiwan amounting to more than €717,000 total during the same period as it received funds from Norta Global.

In addition to this, the Budapest-based company also made at least four transfers to a company called Apollo Systems Ltd. totalling more than $122,000, as well as to the company's managing director in the amount of more than $43,000.

In the course of the whole process, BAC also paid a firm in Hong Kong for logistical services, making fourteen payments of nearly €9000 (the Hong Kong firm in question was also part of the chain, but its name was not divulged by Telex's sources). In addition, the Budapest firm also made payments totalling more than €54,000 to a firm that produced the display module for the pagers .

According to our information, the authorities were also investigating the customs procedures of BAC Consulting. They found that the company had a total of two import procedures in 2022. One was on 30 August 2022, when a woman named Theresa Wu posted a metal chain worth $250 and liquid crystal display panels worth $65.

While press reports claimed that BAC Consulting had an office in Taiwan and Theresa Wu was the head of that office, Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono gave a different account to the investigators. She said that Theresa Wu was actually employed by Apollo Systems Ltd.

Apollo Systems is the company to which BAC transferred a total of more than $122,000. As far as the role of this company is concerned, another thing we were able to find out is that on 18 October 2022, it sent a single pager to BAC (this must have been the sample), which was cleared through customs, but only valued at $10.

However, according to Telex's sources, it is not possible to fully establish the exact trail of the pagers or even the money, and several intelligence services, including the Hungarian one, are continuing to investigate the case in cooperation with each other.