Peel police to announce arrests in Pearson Airport gold heist
CBC
Peel Regional Police and the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau say they plan to announce arrests on Wednesday in the theft of roughly $20 million in gold and nearly $2 million US in cash from Toronto's Pearson International Airport.
The announcement, to be made at 8:30 a.m. ET in Brampton, will come exactly one year after the incident.
CBC News will carry the announcement live.
In a news advisory, the law enforcement services said they would reveal "details and arrests made concerning the theft of gold and cash from Pearson International Airport" as part of Project 24K, a joint-task investigation into the high-value theft.
Peel Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah, Det-Sgt. Mike Mavity and Eric DeGree, special agent in charge of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau, are scheduled to speak.
Police have said little about the case in the last 12 months.
In response to recent questions from CBC News, police have said investigators are "working around the clock in order to locate, arrest and charge those responsible for this crime."
Brink's, a Miami-based security company, meanwhile, is suing Air Canada for allegedly letting a thief walk into an Air Canada facility at the airport and walk out with the gold bars and cash.
In an email on Tuesday, Brink's spokesperson Kaye Faris said: "We were alerted of the news of the announcement today, as well, and look forward to learning more from the Peel Police Department at their news conference tomorrow."
According to court documents obtained by CBC News, on April 14, 2023, Brink's was commissioned by two Swiss banks — Raiffeisen and Valcambi — to move more than 400 kilograms of gold, and $1,945,843 in US bills, from Zurich to Toronto.
At the time, the value of the gold was just over 13.2 million Swiss francs, or almost $20 million Canadian at current exchange rates.
The cargo was loaded on to flight AC881, which departed Zurich at 1:25 p.m. local time on April 17 and arrived safely at Pearson at 3:56 p.m., without incident.
The two cargo shipments — emblazoned with the words BANKNOTES and GOLDBARS — were offloaded from the plane about 20 minutes later and deposited at an Air Canada storage facility about an hour and a half after that.
That's when things went awry, the lawsuit alleges.
