Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) yesterday said that it authorized its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria, but that another company based in Budapest manufactured them.
The pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary’s capital, Gold Apollo said in a statement.
The company said the AR-924 pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group were produced and sold by BAC, which was authorized to use Gold Apollo’s trademark in some regions.
Photo: Yan Zhao, AFP
“We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” it said.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-kuang (許清光) said, adding that his company has had an authorization agreement with BAC for the past three years.
BAC has “cooperated with us and represents many of our products,” he said.
“We are a responsible company. This is very embarrassing,” he said, adding that the company was also a victim of the incident.
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said that its national security division would launch an investigation into the case.
Gold Apollo had no record of directly exporting its products to Lebanon over the past few years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
Products manufactured by Gold Apollo in Taiwan are mainly exported to Europe and North America, the ministry said.
The pagers made in Taiwan are only capable of receiving signals and use AA batteries, which are unlikely to cause fatal explosions, the ministry cited the company as saying.
The company exported about 260,000 pagers from 2022 to last month and 40,929 units in the first eight months of this year, ministry data showed.
Meanwhile, the National Communications Commission said that Gold Apollo’s business license to manufacture and sell radio frequency (RF) devices expired last year.
The Administrative Regulations on the Controlled Telecommunications Radio Frequency Devices (電信管制射頻器材管理辦法) require those seeking to import, sell, produce or display radio frequency devices in the nation must secure a certificate from the commission, the regulator said.
However, pagers are receivers of messages and are not controlled telecommunications RF devices, and such producers need not obtain a certificate, it said.
Manufacturers who sell RF devices to other countries should comply with the regulations in the target nations, it added.
A telecom expert who chose to remain anonymous told the Taipei Times it is surprising that such a small device can be used as a deadly weapon.
“The battery of a pager is much smaller than that of a smartphone and has limited energy storage capacity, so it is quite difficult to kill someone with a pager battery explosion,” the expert said.
A pager is not as tightly assembled as a mobile phone, which makes pagers easy to modify, the expert said.
“My guess is that explosive substances and denotation control mechanisms were added to the pagers before they were in the hands of users,” the expert said.
“It is very likely that the pager’s vibration function for incoming messages was used as part of the denotation control mechanism and a special incoming message command triggered the detonation,” they said.
FIVE-YEAR WINDOW? A defense institute CEO said a timeline for a potential Chinese invasion was based on expected ‘tough measures’ when Xi Jinping seeks a new term Most Taiwanese are willing to defend the nation against a Chinese attack, but the majority believe Beijing is unlikely to invade within the next five years, a poll showed yesterday. The poll carried out last month was commissioned by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei-based think tank, and released ahead of Double Ten National Day today, when President William Lai (賴清德) is to deliver a speech. China maintains a near-daily military presence around Taiwan and has held three rounds of war games in the past two years. CIA Director William Burns last year said that Chinese President Xi Jinping
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that China has “no right to represent Taiwan,” but stressed that the nation was willing to work with Beijing on issues of mutual interest. “The Republic of China has already put down roots in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu,” Lai said in his first Double Ten National Day address outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. “And the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China [PRC] are not subordinate to each other.” “The People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan,” he said at the event marking the 113th National Day of
REACTION TO LAI: A former US official said William Lai took a step toward stability with his National Day speech and the question was how Beijing would respond US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday warned China against taking any “provocative” action on Taiwan after Beijing’s reaction to President William Lai’s (賴清德) speech on Double Ten National Day on Thursday. Blinken, speaking in Laos after an ASEAN East Asia Summit, called the speech by Lai, in which he vowed to “resist annexation,” a “regular exercise.” “China should not use it in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions,” Blinken told reporters. “On the contrary, we want to reinforce — and many other countries want to reinforce — the imperative of preserving the status quo, and neither party taking any
SPEECH IMPEDIMENT? The state department said that using routine celebrations or public remarks as a pretext for provocation would undermine peace and stability Beijing’s expected use of President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day speech today as a pretext for provocative measures would undermine peace and stability, the US Department of State said on Tuesday. Taiwanese officials have said that China is likely to launch military drills near Taiwan in response to Lai’s speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims. A state department spokesperson said it could not speculate on what China would or would not do. “However, it is worth emphasizing that using routine annual celebrations or public remarks as a pretext or excuse for provocative or coercive
RSS