Businesswoman linked to Lebanon pager attack is now ‘in hiding’
A woman whose company is linked to thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria in an attack on Hezbollah has gone into hiding, it has been revealed.
Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, 49, is listed as the CEO of Budapest-based BAC Consulting and the Taiwanese trademark holder of the pagers said it was responsible for the manufacture of the devices.
These pagers killed at least 37 people and wounded more than 3,000, including civilians, an act Hezbollah and the Lebanese government has blamed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
But the Hungarian government said the pagers were never in Hungary and BAC Consultants acted as an intermediary.
However since Wednesday last week the BAC Consulting website has mysteriously been taken down.
Cristiana’s mother, Beatrix, 70, who lives in Catania, Sicily, told MailOnline, her daughter had received unspecified ‘threats’ and is now ‘somewhere safe protected by agents of the Hungarian government’.
This has been denied by Hungarian officials.
Beatrix said she had been advised not to talk to media by the Hungarian secret services and said: ‘No comment, no comment.’
She did say she has been in contact with her daughter though and said she was not involved in the plot.
The mother told Associated Press: ‘She is not involved in any way, she was just a broker. The items did not pass through Budapest. … They were not produced in Hungary.’
Neighbours in Catania expressed their shock at the fact that Cristiana could be involved in something like this.
A person who knows the family said: ‘She could not have known.
‘She is a very clever lady from a respectable family and she would never have done something like this. If it is true, then they must have tricked her.’
A family friend told La Sicilia newspaper: ‘I didn’t believe that Cristiana was the owner of a company capable of such a high profile business.’
Cristiana gained a PhD from University College London in Physics according to her LinkedIn profile.
She worked with now retired Hungarian professor and physicist Ákos Kövér.
He told AP: ‘At the time, we also published some joint articles. I am not aware of her other activities, as far as I know she has not done any scientific work since then.’
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