Peel police to announce arrests in Pearson Airport gold heist

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 suing Air Canada over theft

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.

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.

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That's when things went awry, the lawsuit alleges.

"At approximately 18:32," Brink's alleges in the documents, "an unidentified individual gained access to AC's cargo storage facilities. No security protocols or features were in place to monitor, restrict or otherwise regulate the unidentified individual's access to the facilities."

The unnamed individual handed over a waybill to Air Canada personnel. A waybill is a document that has all the details of the cargo including instructions as to what it contains and where it should go.

Brink's says the waybill was a copy of one tied to an unrelated shipment. Brink's says the airline took the waybill "without verifying its authenticity in any way."

"Upon receipt of the fraudulent waybill, AC personnel released the shipments to the unidentified individual, following which the unidentified individual absconded with the cargo."