Taiwan's Gold Apollo says it did not make pagers used in Lebanon blasts

By Ben Blanchard

NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan (Reuters) - Taiwan's Gold Apollo said on Wednesday the pagers used in the detonations in Lebanon had not been made by it but by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand.

At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday. According to a senior Lebanese security source and another source, explosives inside the devices were planted by Israel's Mossad spy agency.

Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.

"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,' Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.

The company said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.

Gold Apollo authorised "BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC," the statement said.

Hsu earlier said the firm with the licence was based in Europe but later declined to comment on BAC's location.

He added there had been problems with remittances from the firm.

"The remittance was very strange," he said, adding that payments had come through the Middle East. He did not elaborate further.

Hezbollah fighters began using pagers in the belief they would be able to evade Israeli tracking of their locations, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters this year.

Hsu said he did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.

While Hsu was meeting with reporters, police officials arrived at the company. Officials from Taiwan's economy ministry also visited Gold Apollo.

The ministry said in a statement that there was no record of direct pager exports from Taiwan to Lebanon.

Hsu also said Gold Apollo was a victim of the incident and planned to sue the licensee.

"We may not be a large company but we are a responsible one," he said. "This is very embarrassing."

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Michael Perry and Edwina Gibbs)