She speaks seven languages, has a PhD in particle physics, an condominium in Budapest embellished together with her personal pastel drawings of nudes, and a profession that has taken her throughout Africa and Europe doing humanitarian work.
What Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian chief govt and proprietor of Hungary-based BAC Consulting, says she has not carried out is make the explosive pagers that killed 12 folks and injured greater than 2,000 in Lebanon this week.
After it was revealed that his firm had licensed the pager design from its unique Taiwanese producer Gold Apollo, Barsony-Arcidiacono stated NBC Information that she didn’t make them.
“I am only a intermediary. I believe you are fallacious,” she stated.
She has not appeared in public since then. Neighbours say they haven’t seen her. Barsony-Arcidiacono has not responded to Reuters’ calls and emails and there was no reply when Reuters visited her non-public dwelling in central Budapest. Her condominium in a stately outdated constructing in Budapest, the place a vestibule door had been left open earlier within the week, has been locked.
Following publication of this story, Reuters contacted the corporate once more however didn’t obtain a response. The Hungarian authorities stated on Wednesday that BAC Consulting was a “industrial middleman firm” that had no manufacturing amenities within the nation and that the pagers had by no means been in Hungary.
Conversations with acquaintances and former co-workers reveal a girl of spectacular mind and an itinerant profession in a sequence of short-term jobs during which she by no means actually settled.
An acquaintance of hers, who like others who knew her in Budapest requested to not be named, described her as “good-willed, not business-like.” He stated she appeared like an individual who’s all the time captivated with making an attempt new issues and who believes in issues simply.
Kilian Kleinschmidt, a veteran former UN humanitarian administrator who employed Barsony-Arcidiacono in 2019 to steer a six-month Netherlands-funded programme to coach Libyans in Tunisia in topics similar to hydroponics, IT and enterprise growth, described her hiring as a significant “mistake”. After disagreements over how she managed employees, he stated he fired her earlier than her contract ended, which Reuters couldn’t independently confirm.
At her Budapest dwelling, a metal exterior door encloses a small hallway with pastel purple and orange drawings of nudes on the wall. The inside door resulting in her condominium was ajar when Reuters first visited the constructing on Wednesday and was closed when she returned on Thursday. Nobody answered the doorbell.
A lady who lived within the constructing for the previous two years stated Barsony-Arcidiacono was already a resident when she moved in and described her as pleasant, not loud, however talkative.
She practiced her drawing as a part of a Budapest artwork membership, though she had not attended for a few years, stated the group’s organizer, who stated she appeared extra like a businesswoman than an artist however was optimistic and outgoing.
A schoolmate of Barsony-Arcidiacono stated she grew up in a household with a working father and a housewife mom in Santa Venerina, close to Catania in japanese Sicily, and attended secondary faculty close by. He described her as a moderately reserved younger girl.
Within the early 2000s he earned his PhD in physics at College School London, the place his thesis on positrons (a subatomic particle with the mass of an electron and a optimistic cost) continues to be obtainable on the UCL web site. However he seems to have left with out pursuing a scientific profession.
“So far as I do know, she has not carried out any scientific work since then,” Akos Torok, a retired physicist who was one in all her professors at UCL and printed papers together with her on the time, informed Reuters by electronic mail.
A CV he used to land a job with Kleinschmidt included references to different postgraduate levels in politics and growth from the London College of Economics and the College of Oriental and African Research, which Reuters couldn’t confirm.
He then went on to explain a sequence of jobs on NGO initiatives in Europe, Africa and the Center East.
In a separate CV posted on BAC Consulting’s web site, Barsony-Arcidiacono describes herself as a “board member of the Earth Little one Institute,” a New York-based academic and environmental charity. The group’s founder, Donna Goodman, informed Reuters that Barsony-Arcidiacono had by no means held any position there.
“She was a good friend of a good friend of a board member and he or she reached out to us a few job opening” in 2018, Goodman stated. “However she was by no means invited to use.”
The CV additionally describes her as a former “venture supervisor” on the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company in 2008-2009, which organised a convention on nuclear analysis. The IAEA stated her information indicated she had been an intern there for eight months.
On BAC Consulting’s web site, which was taken down on the finish of this week, the corporate gave few particulars about its precise exercise in Hungary. Its registered workplace is a serviced workplace in a Budapest suburb.
“I’m a scientist who makes use of her very various background to work on interdisciplinary initiatives for strategic decision-making (water and local weather insurance policies, investments),” wrote Barsony-Arcidiacono on her CV.
“With wonderful analytical, linguistic and interpersonal expertise, I get pleasure from working and main in a multicultural surroundings the place variety, integrity and humor are valued.”
