PhD Holder and Polyglot Linked to Pager Explosions

Budapest: Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, an Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of Hungary-based BAC Consulting, is fluent in seven languages and holds a PhD in particle physics. Her Budapest apartment features her own pastel drawings of nudes, and her career has taken her across Africa and Europe for humanitarian work. However, she asserts that she is not responsible for the exploding pagers that resulted in 12 fatalities and over 2,000 injuries in Lebanon this week.

After it was disclosed that her company licensed the pager design from the original Taiwanese manufacturer, Gold Apollo, Barsony-Arcidiacono clarified to NBC News that she did not create them. “I am just the intermediary. I think you’ve misunderstood,” she stated.

Since then, she has remained out of the public eye, with neighbors noting they haven't seen her. She has not responded to inquiries for comment, and her apartment, located in an elegant older building in Budapest, has been closed off.

Conversations with acquaintances and former colleagues sketch a portrait of a highly intelligent woman whose career has been marked by numerous short-term roles. Despite her impressive credentials, she often seemed unable to settle into a long-term position, occasionally embellishing her CV along the way. 

An acquaintance, who requested anonymity, remarked that she appeared to be someone who could easily be taken advantage of. “She has a good heart, not really a businessperson—more of someone who frequently tries new things and quickly gets enthusiastic,” they noted, adding that Barsony-Arcidiacono was seeking new income opportunities as she wanted to leave her previous job.

‘ONE OF THE BIGGEST MISTAKES OF MY LIFE’

Kilian Kleinschmidt, a seasoned former U.N. humanitarian administrator who employed Barsony-Arcidiacono in 2019 for a Dutch-funded program training Libyans in Tunisia, described her management style as “bullying.” He ultimately terminated her contract early due to personal difficulties. “Cristiana was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, I think,” Kleinschmidt told Reuters. “It was simply awful on a personal level. At some point, I just said enough is enough.”

Barsony-Arcidiacono has not replied to calls and emails from Reuters, and there was no response when a reporter visited her listed address in downtown Budapest.

At her residence, a steel outer gate leads to a small vestibule, where life drawings of nudes in red and orange pastels can be seen on the wall. During a visit by Reuters, the inner door to her apartment was initially ajar but closed on a subsequent trip, and no one answered the doorbell.

A neighbor who has lived in the building for the past two years described Barsony-Arcidiacono as kind, quiet, but approachable. She participated in a local art club but had not attended in recent years, according to the group’s organizer, who noted that she seemed more business-minded than artistic, yet was cheerful and sociable.

A former schoolmate revealed that Barsony-Arcidiacono grew up in Santa Venerina, near Catania in eastern Sicily, in a family with a working father and a stay-at-home mother. He recalled her as a reserved young girl.

In the early 2000s, she earned her PhD in physics from University College London, where her dissertation focused on positrons, a subatomic particle. However, it appears she did not pursue a scientific career afterward. “To my knowledge, she has not engaged in scientific work since then,” said Akos Torok, a retired physicist who was one of her professors at UCL and co-authored papers with her.

A resume she presented to secure her position with Kleinschmidt claimed other postgraduate degrees in politics and development from institutions like the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies, claims that Reuters could not verify. She went on to list a variety of roles with NGOs across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

In another version of her CV on the BAC Consulting website, she claimed to be a “Board Member at the Earth Child Institute,” an educational and environmental charity in New York. The group’s founder, Donna Goodman, confirmed that Barsony-Arcidiacono never held any position there. “She was a friend of a friend of a board member and reached out to us about a job opening in 2018, but she was never invited to apply,” Goodman stated.

Her CV also mentioned a role as a “Project Manager” at the International Atomic Energy Agency from 2008 to 2009, where she supposedly organized a nuclear research conference. However, the IAEA indicated that her records show she only interned there for eight months.

The BAC Consulting website, which has since been taken down, provided little insight into the company’s actual operations in Hungary, with its registered address being a serviced office in a Budapest suburb.

“I am a scientist leveraging my diverse background to work on interdisciplinary projects for strategic decision-making related to water and climate policy and investments,” Barsony-Arcidiacono described in her CV.