The race to find the maker of the pagers that exploded in Lebanon has taken an unexpected turn – towards a Taiwanese company few had heard of until this morning.
At least 12 people were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in Tuesday’s explosions targeting members of the armed group Hezbollah, which set off a geopolitical storm in the Middle East.
Caught in the crisis, Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo’s founder Hsu Ching-Kuang flatly denied his company had anything to do with the attacks.
Instead, Mr Hsu has said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers. BBC attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful.
“You look at the pictures from Lebanon,” Mr Hsu told reporters outside his firm’s offices on Wednesday. “They don’t have any mark saying Made in Taiwan on them, we did not make those pagers!”
The offices of Gold Apollo are in a large new business park in a non-descript suburb of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.
They look the same as any of the thousands of small trading companies and manufacturers that make up a huge chunk of the island’s economy – except for the two police officers posted at the entrance, ready to fend off the large gaggle of reporters and TV crews squatting outside.
On the walls of Gold Apollo’s office are posters of the company’s products – a montage of small boxy plastic devices with little grey LCD screens. They are all pagers.
Until this morning the company’s website had a page devoted to each, extolling its virtues and practicalities. But as soon as news broke that Gold Apollo was the alleged source of the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon, the website went offline.