It was an unusual, anxious day at work for employees and neighbors of Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese tech company based in an office park in a leafy neighborhood about 30 minutes outside Taipei.
Dozens of media were gathered in the corridor outside Gold Apollo's glass entrance on the third floor of Building B, where Lunar New Year decorations meant to bring prosperity were still in place.
Inside the store, police officers sat around a table with the company's CEO and founder, Xu Qingguang, with a whiteboard behind him reading “AR-924” — the model number of a pager that simultaneously exploded halfway around the world on Tuesday during an attack on Hezbollah members in Lebanon.
The explosion killed at least nine people, injured 3,000 and further increased tensions in the Middle East.
Coverage of the crisis in the region then shifted to Taiwan, and specifically to Gold Apollo, after images surfaced of a pager with a sticker on the back that appeared to match one made by the company.
Earlier, Su appeared in international media to deny that his company made the pagers. He claimed the pagers were made by a European company that holds the rights to use the Gold Apollo brand. “This product is not ours,” he said. “We are a responsible company. This is very embarrassing.”
Gold Apollo was founded by Hsu in 1995 and currently employs 40 people. The company's website was inaccessible on Wednesday, but the Guardian was unable to confirm when it became inaccessible. An archived version from April features a dedicated page for the AR-924 model, which Gold Apollo describes as a “configurable and flexible design.”
As the morning progressed, the reporters' numbers grew. Officials peeked in through the door, promising a statement soon. Inside, uniformed police officers flipped through stacks of papers containing photos of the exploding pagers.
Hsu then spoke on camera again, his voice trembling slightly, again denying that a Taiwan-based company had supplied the pagers.
As reporters surrounded Xu, security guards approached, picked up the printed statements the reporters had left on the floor, and photographed them for the manager downstairs, who was concerned about the cause of this unusual scene.
Media attention then shifted to Europe, leaving behind a bewildered-looking delivery driver who showed up with a package addressed to one of Apollo Gold's employees.
