How Canada Airport’s Gold, Cash Heist Unfolded, 2 Indian-Origin Men Held | Image:pexels
New Delhi: A major heist, involving men of Indian origin, was unraveled in Canada on Thursday. With this crack down, a large nexus of criminal activities that intertwined gold, cash, and firearms was busted.
A reminiscence of a crime thriller, the scenes unfolded at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, which witnessed disappearance of valuables worth multi million Canadian dollars. The heist was reported on April 17 in 2023.
According to sources, gold bars and foreign currency were stolen from a secure storage facility within the airport’s premises.
Investigations have revealed the modus operandi of the gang. They carried out the heist by using forged paperwork to gain access to the precious cargo.
On April 17 last year, an Air Canada flight with a cargo container, carrying valuables worth multi million dollars, landed at Pearson International Airport.
Sources revealed that the contained carried 6,600 bars of .9999% pure gold, weighing 400 kilograms, along with 2.5 million Canadian dollars’ worth in foreign currency.
The cargo was destined for secure storage within the airport premises before departing for its final destinations.
The loot was captured by the CCTV cameras put there for surveillance. In the footage, a truck was seen pulling up to the warehouse and loading the container carrying the gold and cash.
The precious cargo vanished overnight, leaving the officials perplexed in the puzzle.
The airline’s staff were in the spotlight for allegedly playing key roles in facilitating the theft.
Police arrested the former and current employees of the country’s flag carrier. The accused, Parmpal Sidhu and Simran Preet Panesar, held significant positions within the airline which provided them with insider knowledge crucial to executing the heist.
The matter came to light the next morning as police were alerted after the heist which then launched an investigation. The probe spanned international jurisdictions.
As the probe intensified a intricate web of connections began to unravel, hinting towards an Indian connection.
The matter took a dramatic turn as cops on both sides of the US-Canada border joined the operation to hunt the accused which further uncovered the link between the stolen gold and an illegal firearms nexus.
Following the arrest of Durante King-Mclean, a 25-year-old man from Brampton, in the US a parallel criminal network, revealing ties between the gold thieves and a scheme to smuggle firearms into Canada, was exposed.
