After pagers exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday in what appears to be unprecedented act of sabotage by Israel, questions remain over how the country’s vaunted spy agencies were able to infiltrate the Hezbollah supply chain to put boobytrapped pagers and walkie talkies in the pockets of as many as 5,000 of its members.
Among the most interesting is the role of BAC Consulting, the Budapest-based company apparently responsible for shipping the Taiwanese-branded pagers. Three intelligence officials told the New York Times that BAC was a front for Israeli intelligence, making it a crucial cog in the machine that led to the devastating attacks earlier this week.
What is BAC, exactly? The Hungarian company, which offers a wide range of consulting services related to AI, “systemic leadership” and analysis of geospatial data per its website, does not appear to have a history in electronics manufacturing. It was cofounded in 2019 by CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono and a Denmark-based business development consultant called Hansen, according to an archived version of the company website. (Bársony-Arcidiacono and Hansen did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.)
As the Financial Times reported, the company earned revenues of about $800,000 in 2023. On the company’s website, there’s little information about clients, though it does note BAC worked as an expert evaluator for the European Commission. But its work was vaguely described as “evaluating various multilingual proposals according to various calls.” Commission spokesperson Balazs Ujvari told Forbes it had “no indication” of any direct dealing with BAC, but that Bársony-Arcidiacono had worked as an external expert with the European Education and Culture Executive Agency for short time periods between 2021 and 2023.
It’s unknown if BAC has ever had any connection to Israel. Following the incident, a Hungarian government spokesperson tweeted, “authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary… the referenced devices have never been in Hungary.”
Bársony-Arcidiacono told NBC earlier this week, “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong.”
Her background is in science and climatology. Forbes confirmed Bársony-Arcidiacono has degrees University College London and London-based School of Oriental and African Studies, and was a postdoctoral researcher in climatology for the French National Centre for Scientific Research for a year. The BBC confirmed she also has a physics degree from the University of Catania in Italy.
But her resume has a number of glaring inconsistencies. She claims on Linkedin and her online CV to have been a project manager at the International Atomic Energy Agency, based out of the United Nations offices, but an IAEA spokesperson told Forbes she was actually an intern. She claims a degree in modern political thought and democratization from London School of Economics and Political Science, but an LSE spokesperson told Forbes it didn’t offer that kind of diploma when she was there. Bársony-Arcidiacono also said on LinkedIn she’s on the board of nonprofit the Earth Child Institute (ECI), which told the BBC she “is not and never has been an official member of the Earth Child Institute board of directors.”
Forbes’ calls and messages to the CEO went unanswered.
How someone with such an extensive background in physics and climate science came to be embroiled in one of the most astonishing intel operations in recent memory remains a mystery. Reached over LinkedIn, one of Bársony-Arcidiacono’s friends, who asked that their name not be mentioned for security reasons, said he had no knowledge of BAC’s operations, but added, “I would be very surprised if she had knowingly become involved in this.”
It’s not clear if BAC is involved in the second attack in Lebanon, in which walkie talkies exploded spontaneously on Wednesday, a day after the pager explosions.
