Taiwan Company Tries to Distance Itself From Pagers Used in Lebanon Attack

by · NY Times

Taiwan Company Tries to Distance Itself From Pagers Used in Lebanon Attack

The company, Gold Apollo, said it had not manufactured the devices, pointing to another company that it said was licensed to use its brand.

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Workers at the Gold Apollo factory in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday.
Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan

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Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company that American and other officials named as the supplier of pagers used in attacks in Lebanon that killed at least 11 people, sought on Wednesday to distance itself from the devices.

American and other officials briefed on the attack had said that Israel had inserted explosive material into a shipment of pagers from Gold Apollo, in an apparently coordinated operation aimed at Hezbollah.

Gold Apollo denied that it had made the pagers, pointing instead at another manufacturer that it said had made that model of pager, using Gold Apollo’s brand, as part of a licensing deal.

Explosive material that had been concealed inside a batch of the pagers detonated after they received a signal. Around 2,700 people were also injured by the attack.

But at Gold Apollo’s office on the outskirts of Taipei on Wednesday, Hsu Ching-Kuang, the company’s founder and president, said the pagers were made by another company. Gold Apollo later identified that company as B.A.C. Consulting, a firm it described as having an address in Budapest.

Mr. Hsu said he had agreed about three years ago to let B.A.C. sell its own products using the Gold Apollo brand, which he said had a good reputation in the niche market.

“That product isn’t ours. They just stick on our company brand,” Mr. Hsu told journalists, adding that in return his company received a share of the profits.

“We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” Gold Apollo said in a written statement. Even so, the Gold Apollo website displayed a picture of the pager model until the web page was taken down on Wednesday.

Some of the officials briefed on the operation had said that the pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, and that most were Gold Apollo’s AR924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

In a separate statement, Gold Apollo said that the AR924 model was produced and sold by B.A.C., with which it had a “long-term partnership.” “Our company only provides the brand trademark authorization and is not involved in the design or manufacturing of this product,” the company said.

Efforts to contact B.A.C. and verify Gold Apollo’s account were not immediately successful.

Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, who lists herself as the chief executive of B.A.C. Consulting on LinkedIn, did not immediately respond to messages. “I don’t make the pagers,” she told NBC News. “I am just the intermediate.”

A top Hungarian official also tried to distance the country from what the explosions. “The company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary, “ Zoltan Kovacs, Hungary’s secretary for international communication, said in a post on social media. He added, “The referenced devices have never been in Hungary.”

Tracing how and when the pagers were packed with explosive material could be complicated. Taiwan’s sprawling consumer electronics industry is a complex supply chain of brands, manufacturers and agents.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, which oversees trade, said that its records showed “no direct exports to Lebanon” of such pagers from Gold Apollo. The company’s pagers were mainly exported to Europe and North America, the ministry said. The company reviewed news reports and photographs and judged that the pagers had been modified only after being exported from Taiwan, the ministry said. The New York Times could not independently verify the assessment.

Mr. Hsu said that he had a longstanding relationship with B.A.C. before they struck the brand licensing deal. Looking back, he said, there was one “odd” incident with B.A.C., when a local Taiwanese bank had delayed a bank transfer from the company because the local bank had suspicions about it. Mr. Hsu said the transfer might have come from a bank in the Middle East. He did not say which country.

Amelia Nierenberg and Barnabas Heincz contributed reporting.

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