BUDAPEST (Askume) – Hungary’s intelligence services have conducted several interviews with the chief executive of Budapest-based BAC Consulting, which is linked to this week’s bombing of a pager used by Hezbollah members, the government said on Saturday.
Taiwanese pager company Gold Apollo said on Wednesday that the model of pager used in the Lebanese bombings was made by BAC Consulting. It added that the company only licenses its brand and is not involved in the production of the devices.
Cristiana Barsoni-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of BAC Consulting , told NBC News earlier this week that she has never built a pager and said she is “only an intermediate level.”
Hungarian intelligence agencies had been investigating since Wednesday and had questioned Barsony-Arcidiacono several times, the Hungarian government’s international press office said in a statement.
It cited the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (AH), one of Hungary’s intelligence agencies.
Hungary reiterated its government’s earlier statement that the pager device used in the mass bombing was never in Hungary .
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government has also previously stated that BAC Consulting is “a commercial intermediary company that has no manufacturing or other operational sites in Hungary”.
The attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday caused pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members to explode. The total death toll from these attacks has risen to 39 people and more than 3,000 have been injured. The attacks are believed to have been carried out by Israel, but Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
