Who Made Hezbollah’s Explosive Devices? Questions Surround Mysterious Supply Chain Stretching from Taiwan to Hungary

A Taiwanese electronics maker said a small European company made pagers linked to a deadly attack on Hezbollah members in Lebanon on Tuesday. Another wave of walkie-talkie explosions occurred in parts of the country on Wednesday, raising questions about how the devices got there.

On Wednesday, at Gold Apollo’s unassuming offices on the outskirts of the Taiwanese capital, the company’s founder, Hsu Ching-kuang, vehemently denied that he had manufactured the brand’s pagers used in Tuesday’s attack – later pointing, without evidence, to the Budapest-based consulting firm BAC.

“Product design and manufacturing are the sole responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement. Hsu said his company began working with the Hungarian company about three years ago.

The accusations raise further questions about who manufactured the devices and how they ended up in Hezbollah’s pockets.

Hungarian authorities dismissed Gold Apollo’s suggestion on Wednesday evening, saying the Budapest-registered company “is a commercial intermediary” with no production facilities in the country. “The devices in question have never been in Hungary,” said Hungarian State Secretary for International Communications Zoltan Kovacs.

CNN attempted to contact BAC through a website that Gold Apollo provided to reporters, as well as at an address listed as BAC’s office in a residential area of ​​Budapest.

On Wednesday morning, a receptionist working in the building told CNN that BAC Consulting rents space at the address but has never physically been in the building. A woman living in an apartment upstairs said she barely sees anyone coming into the building for work.

Plainclothes police arrived at the scene while CNN was there. Kovacs said an investigation had been launched and that Hungary was “cooperating with all relevant international partner agencies and organizations.”

CNN also contacted BAC Consulting CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono by email and phone number but did not receive a response. NBC News reported that Bársony-Arcidiacono confirmed in a phone interview that her company worked with Gold Apollo, but denied that it made the pagers, saying, “I’m just a middleman.” CNN could not confirm her statement.

Meanwhile, Gold Apollo continues to be under scrutiny as multiple photos from Tuesday’s attacks show damaged devices bearing the company’s trademark.

CNN has learned that the brazen attack, which further escalated tensions in a region already on edge, was a joint operation by Israeli intelligence, Mossad, and the Israeli military. The Lebanese government condemned the attack as “criminal Israeli aggression.”

The New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources, that Israel hid explosives inside the bombs and added a switch to each one that was later used to remotely detonate them.

The production of pagers in Taiwan is strictly regulated because of their transmission function, and authorities carry out regular inspections, a senior Taiwanese security official told CNN on Wednesday.

The Gold Apollo pagers met all standards and nothing unusual was found in them, according to the official, who did not provide further details about the inspection.

Since it was founded in 1995, Gold Apollo has produced a wide range of devices, from pagers — wireless devices that can send messages without an internet connection, commonly used by emergency services and hospitals — to buzzers used in restaurants, according to the company’s website.

The company said in a previous media report that it works with distributors around the world to sell its products, having once touted itself as one of the largest suppliers of walkie-talkies and pagers in the U.S. and Europe, with intelligence agencies and emergency services among its customers.

Exploding pagers

According to photos posted on social media in Lebanon, at least one pager shown at the scene was identified as a Gold Apollo AR924 model, advertised as a compact, waterproof device that uses a lithium-ion battery, according to product information on the company’s website.

Gold Apollo said in a statement that the AR924 pager was manufactured and sold by BAC under a licensing agreement. The company declined to show CNN the agreement.

Hsu said that at the beginning of the cooperation, the European partner only imported pagers and communication products from the Taiwanese company. Later, BAC told Gold Apollo that it wanted to produce its own pagers and asked for the right to use its brand, he added.

Hsu said Gold Apollo encountered at least one anomaly in its dealings with the Hungarian company, citing as an example a bank transfer that took a long time to process.

“We may not be a big company, but we are a responsible company,” he said. “It’s very embarrassing.”

BAC Consulting’s website describes “Connecting Technology and Innovation from Asia” as one of several projects it is working on. “We are developing international technology collaborations” between countries to sell telecommunications products. This collaboration involves scaling business from Asia to new markets, such as developing countries, it says.

BAC Consulting was founded in 2022, according to company documents from the Hungarian Ministry of Justice. The firm, which says it has worked with clients across a range of sectors, saw its total assets grow almost tenfold between 2022 and 2023, from $36,466 to $322,670 in just one year, according to the same documents.

According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Commerce, some 260,000 pagers were shipped from the island under the Gold Apollo project between early 2022 and August 2024, mostly to the United States and Australia.

The ministry said in a statement that Taipei had no record of any shipment of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon, adding that it would continue to investigate the matter.

Low tech devices

The AR924 is not available for sale in Taiwan, according to a senior Taiwanese security official. Taiwanese telecoms companies ended pager services in 2011 because of a sharp decline in their use amid the growing popularity of mobile phones.

As a representative of the company’s American distributor told CNN, the AR924 model is also not available in the United States.

The simple technology of pagers appeared to be an asset to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant organization based in Lebanon.

Earlier this year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah appealed to Hezbollah members and their families in the south of the country, where fierce fighting with Israeli forces across the border is ongoing, to get rid of their cellphones, believing that Israel could use the devices to track the movements of the Iranian-backed terror network.

According to Taiwanese corporate records, Hsu founded Gold Apollo in 1995 with capital of NT$100 million ($3.1 million).

At the time, pagers — known locally as “BB calls” — were all the rage on the island. But the termination of pager services by phone companies prompted the company to shift its focus from domestic to overseas markets, he told Taiwan’s Commonwealth Magazine in 2011.

Gold Apollo soon dominated the pager markets in Western countries, the magazine reported. Most of the demand for its pagers came from intelligence agencies, fire departments and defense departments in the U.S. and Europe, including the FBI, the report said.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect new developments.

Gianluca Mezzofiore, Tamara Qiblawi, Pallabi Munsi, Oren Liebermann and Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.

To receive more CNN news and newsletters, sign up for CNN.com