The first question after the two waves of simultaneous explosions that rocked Lebanon this week, killing at least 37 people, was obvious: Where did the thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies that were remotely detonated come from?
The pagers were made by Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, but its chairman quickly denied any involvement in the plot. “The product does not belong to us. It only had our brand,” Hsu Ching-kuang said Wednesday. In a statement, Gold Apollo said it had authorized another company, BAC, to use its name. “The design and manufacturing of the products were entirely handled by BAC,” they said from Taiwan.
Even Taiwan’s political authorities have intervened in the matter: “I can say with certainty that they were not produced in Taiwan,” Economy Minister JW Kuo told parliament on Friday. Meanwhile, Gold Apollo’s chairman said that “the payments [de BAC a Gold Apollo] They were very strange,” adding that they were from the Middle East.
For its part, BAC, based in Budapest, Hungary, claims to be only a middleman and did not manufacture the devices. On Wednesday, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said the pagers never went to Hungary and that the company was a “commercial middleman.”
The mystery seems to be solved by three sources in the American intelligence services with information on the operation who assured the New York Times that BAC was a front company for the Israeli secret services. Up to 12 other sources confirmed to the newspaper that it was an operation directed from Tel Aviv.
The Budapest-based company had ordinary customers, but the only one it really cared about was Hezbollah, the New York Times reports. The devices began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022, but production quickly ramped up when the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, asked his members to give up cellphones for security reasons.
Taiwanese investigators have discovered the existence of an alleged BAC office in Taiwan, registered under the name Apollo Systems Ltd., with a total capital of NT$100,000 (about $3,120), according to the official CNA news agency.
The company, based in a commercial building in Taipei, was officially registered with the capital’s government on April 11 this year, and its business activities include wholesale, retail and international trade of computer equipment, EFE reports. The office is located in a shared space (“coworking”) managed by Taiwan Asset Management Corporation (TAMCO), which on Thursday denied any knowledge of its tenants’ business activities and assured that it would cooperate “actively” with prosecutors.
The New York Times reports that at least two other front companies are involved. In this sense, the Bulgarian authorities are investigating information about a company, Norta Global, which could be behind the sending of the pagers and which, in turn, could use BAC as another cover.
Hungarian media outlet Telex claims that the Bulgarian company, based in Sofia, was responsible for carrying out the transaction, although on paper it was BAC that signed the contract with Gold Apollo. The outlet, citing sources familiar with the matter, assures that BAC contacted Norta Global to close the deal. Both companies, BAC and Norta Global, do not have their own headquarters and are registered with a company that is dedicated to providing an address to other companies and in which dozens of companies can be registered, various media outlets claim.
“Following the inspections carried out by the Bulgarian National Agency for National Security (DANS), in cooperation with the National Tax Agency, the Ministry of the Interior and the Customs Agency, it has been established beyond doubt that no imported, exported or manufactured communication devices in Bulgaria coincide with those used in the attacks of September 17, 2024 in Lebanon and Syria,” the agency said in a statement collected by EFE.
“The investigation data show that Norta Global Ltd. did not carry out financial transactions falling within the scope of the Law on Measures against the Financing of Terrorism, nor did it maintain business relations with persons or entities subject to sanctions by the UN Security Council or the EU Council,” it added.
Bulgarian television bTV, citing a source in the Bulgarian National Security Agency, reported that 1.6 million euros worth of explosive devices had transited through Bulgaria to Hungary,
Regarding the “walkies” that exploded on Thursday, Japanese manufacturer Icom, whose name and logo appear on the detonated devices, assured that it had not manufactured this model since 2014 and that it had not yet been able to determine whether they were in fact their modified models or whether they were counterfeits. The batteries, moreover, have also ceased to be manufactured, it added.
The Japanese company manufactured around 160,000 units between 2005 and 2014 exclusively in Japan and sold them worldwide, including the Middle East.
