Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, the 49-year-old Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of Hungary-based BAC Consulting, has denied involvement in the production of exploding pagers that recently killed 12 people and injured over 2,000 in Lebanon. Speaking to NBC News, Barsony-Arcidiacono, who holds a PhD in particle physics and speaks seven languages, asserted, “I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong,” after it was revealed that her company had licensed the design for the pagers from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo.
Since the incident, Barsony-Arcidiacono has not made any public appearances, and neighbours in Budapest reported that they have not seen her. Her apartment, located in an old stately building, has remained closed after initial media inquiries. Efforts to reach her for comment have been unsuccessful.
Barsony-Arcidiacono’s background paints a picture of a highly intelligent individual with a diverse career. Known for her humanitarian work across Africa and Europe, she also held various short-term positions but was often described as someone who never fully settled into a stable role. A former acquaintance in Budapest, who wished to remain anonymous, characterized her as “good-willed” but vulnerable to being manipulated. They added, “She seemed like someone who could easily be used.”
One of her former employers, Kilian Kleinschmidt, a former U.N. humanitarian administrator, described Barsony-Arcidiacono as a “bullying” manager. He hired her in 2019 to lead a Dutch-funded program training Libyans in Tunisia, but he terminated her contract early due to her behavior. “It was simply awful on a personal level… one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” Kleinschmidt told Reuters, noting that he should have ended her contract sooner.
Barsony-Arcidiacono’s career also includes several unverifiable claims. For example, her resume listed post-graduate degrees from prestigious institutions such as the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies, though Reuters could not confirm these qualifications. Additionally, a resume posted on her company’s website mentioned a role as “Board Member” at the Earth Child Institute, a New York-based educational and environmental charity, a position the charity’s founder, Donna Goodman, denied she ever held.
Furthermore, Barsony-Arcidiacono’s CV stated she had worked as a “Project Manager” at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2008 to 2009, where she claimed to have organized a nuclear research conference. However, the IAEA confirmed that she had only interned at the organization for eight months.
Despite these inconsistencies, Barsony-Arcidiacono’s academic background is verifiable. She earned her PhD in physics at University College London (UCL), where her dissertation on positrons, a subatomic particle, remains accessible on the UCL website. Akos Torok, one of her professors at UCL, confirmed that she had not pursued a scientific career after her studies, stating, “As far as I know, she has not done scientific work since then.”
BAC Consulting, the company Barsony-Arcidiacono owns, was registered at a serviced office in a Budapest suburb and provided little detail about its business activities on its now-defunct website. In her CV, Barsony-Arcidiacono described herself as “a scientist using my very diverse background to work on interdisciplinary projects for strategic decision-making (water & climate policy, investments).” She also emphasized her ability to work in multicultural environments.
While the full details of Barsony-Arcidiacono’s involvement in the exploding pagers incident remain unclear, the controversy has cast a shadow over her career and business activities. For now, the once-prominent CEO has remained silent, with her whereabouts unknown.
