BAC Consulting, the company implicated in the manufacturing and supply of thousands of pagers supplied to Hezbollah, is actually an Israeli shell company, a report by the New York Times has unveiled.

According to intelligence sources briefed on the operation, BAC Consulting, along with at least two other shell companies, was used to mask the involvement of Israeli intelligence in the operation.

The report reveals that the pagers, which began being shipped to Lebanon in 2022, were strategically introduced into Hezbollah's supply chain. This followed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's public condemnation of cellphones, which he deemed operationally unsafe due to potential Israeli surveillance.

“Even before Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer,” The New York Times report stated.

“Over the summer, shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and being distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies,” two US intelligence officials told the western news outlet.

The attack, executed by Israel on Tuesday, involved embedding explosive materials within a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers. The devices, ordered by Hezbollah from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, were tampered with before reaching Lebanon. Most of the pagers were of Gold Apollo's AR924 model, although other models were also included in the shipment.

The tampering process involved inserting explosive materials—ranging from one to two ounces—next to the battery of each pager. A remotely triggered switch was embedded to detonate the explosives. According to officials, the pagers were programmed to emit a beep for several seconds before exploding.

“BAC did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN,” the report quoted three intelligence officers as saying.

Following the attack, Gold Apollo distanced itself from the incident, claiming that the pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting, which is reported to have an address in Budapest. 

The attack's effectiveness was contingent on the pagers being switched on and receiving messages, impacting those in active use by Hezbollah members and their allies. The exact timeline of the pagers' order and arrival in Lebanon remains unclear.

On Thursday, Hungary announced that the explosive-laden pagers were “never” in the country.

"Hungarian authorities have established that the company in question is a trading-intermediary company, which has no manufacturing or other site of operation in Hungary. It has one head of operations in Hungary on its listed address and the devices referenced have never been to Hungary," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said via social media.