Hungarian intelligence agency interviewed CEO linked to exploding Hezbollah pagers

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BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian intelligence services have conducted several interviews with the CEO of BAC Consulting, a Budapest-based company linked to deadly explosions of pagers used by Hezbollah members this week, the Hungarian government said on Saturday.

Taiwanese pager firm Gold Apollo said on Wednesday that the model of pagers used in detonations in Lebanon were made by BAC Consulting, adding it had only licensed out its brand to the company and was not involved in the production of the devices.

Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of BAC Consulting, told NBC News earlier this week that she did not make the pagers and said she was “just the intermediate.”

Hungarian intelligence agencies have been conducting their investigation since Wednesday and have interviewed Barsony-Arcidiacono several times, the Hungarian government’s international press office said in a statement.

It quoted the Constitution Protection Office (AH), one of Hungary’s intelligence agencies.

The AH reiterated an earlier statement from the government that said that the pager devices used in the mass detonations were never in Hungary.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government also said earlier that BAC Consulting was “a trading-intermediary company, which has no manufacturing or other site of operation in Hungary”.

In two days of attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded. The total death toll in those attacks has risen to 39, and more than 3,000 were injured. The attacks were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

(Reporting by Anita Komuves; Editing by Frances Kerry)