What we know about the Taiwanese firm caught up in Lebanon’s exploding pagers attack
Hsu Ching-kuang, founder of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, speaks to the media outside the company’s office in New Taipei City on September 18.
The deadly simultaneous explosions triggered by hundreds of pagers carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon have thrust a little-known Taiwanese electronics manufacturer into the global spotlight, after its damaged products were identified in images following the attack.
At the non-descript offices of Gold Apollo on the outskirts of the Taiwanese capital on Wednesday, the founder of the company, Hsu Ching-kuang, vehemently denied making the pagers used in the massive assault. Instead, he said the devices were made by a European firm that had licensed his brand.
“Of course, I feel like a victim,” Hsu told reporters shortly before police officers arrived to carry out an investigation. “I’ve been going about my own business for 30 years, why am I suddenly roped into this?”
Multiple photos from the Tuesday attacks appearing to show damaged pagers bearing the Gold Apollo trademark has heightened scrutiny of the company, especially after the New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources, that Israel hid explosives inside the devices and added a switch in each one, which was later used to detonate them remotely.
The production of pagers is highly regulated in Taiwan due to their transmission functions, with authorities conducting regular inspections, a senior Taiwanese security official told CNN on Wednesday.
Gold Apollo’s pagers had met all standards and nothing unusual was found, according to the official, who did not provide further details about the inspection. Authorities are additionally looking into the company’s claim that it had outsourced production to Europe, they added.
Gold Apollo has been making a wide range of devices from pagers – wireless devices that can send messages without an internet connection commonly used by emergency services and hospitals – to buzzers used by restaurants since its 1995 founding, according to the company’s website.
It works with distributors around the world to sell its products, the firm said in a previous media report, once touting itself as one of the largest suppliers of walkie talkies and pagers in the US and Europe and counting intelligence agencies and emergency services among its clients.
Hsu said on Wednesday the pagers identified in media reports in Lebanon were manufactured and sold by a European partner, which established a relationship with his firm about three years ago.
In a statement issued later in the day, Gold Apollo identified the distributor, a Budapest–based company called BAC Consulting, and said it had licensed its trademark for sales in designated regions.
“The design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” the statement said.
CNN has attempted to reach BAC through the website that Gold Apollo gave to reporters.
Exploding pagers
According to social media images from Lebanon, at least one pager shown at the scene was identified as the Gold Apollo AR924 model, billed as a compact waterproof device which uses a rechargeable lithium battery, according to product information on the company’s website.
Gold Apollo claimed in its statement that the AR924 pager was produced and sold by BAC, which was covered by a licensing agreement. The company has declined to show the contract to CNN.
Hsu said that early in its relationship, the European partner only imported the Taiwanese company’s pager and communication products. Later, the company told Gold Apollo it wished to make its own pagers and asked for the right to use its brand, he added.
Hsu said Gold Apollo had encountered at least one anomaly in its dealings with the European company, citing a wire transfer that took a long time to clear.
“We may not be a large company, but we are a responsible one,” he said. “This is very embarrassing.”
According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, Gold Apollo shipped about 260,000 pagers from the island, mostly to the United States and Australia, between the start of 2022 to August 2024.
Taipei has no record of Gold Apollo pagers being shipped to Lebanon, the ministry said in a statement, adding it will continue to investigate.
Low-tech devices
The AR924 model is not available for sale in Taiwan, according to the senior Taiwanese security official. Taiwan’s telecom companies ended pager services in 2011, due to a sharp decline in usage amid the growing popularity of mobile phones.
The AR924 is not available in the United States either, a representative at the company’s US distributor told CNN.
The low-tech nature of pagers seemed to be a selling point to Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon.
At the start of the year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on members and their families in the south of the country, where fighting with Israeli forces across the border has raged, to dump their cellphones, believing Israel could track the movement of the Iran-backed terror network through those devices.
Hsu founded Gold Apollo with 100 million New Taiwan dollars ($3.1 million) in capital in 1995, according to Taiwan’s corporate registry.
At the time, pagers – known locally as “BB call” – were trending on the island. But phone companies’ termination of pager services prompted the firm to shift its focus from the domestic market to overseas, he told Taiwan’s Commonwealth Magazine in an interview in 2011.
Gold Apollo soon dominated pager markets in Western countries, the magazine reported. Most of the demand for its pagers came from intelligence agencies, firefighting services and defense departments in the US and Europe, including the FBI, the report said.