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Canadian police say 9 people will be charged after $20 million worth of gold was stolen last year from airport
Police said nine people are facing charges in what authorities are calling the biggest gold theft in Canadian history from Toronto’s Pearson International airport a year ago.
Peel Regional Police said Wednesday that 6,600 gold bars worth more than 20 million Canadian dollars ($14.5 million) and CA$2.5 million ($1.8 million) was stolen and the gold was melted down and used to purchase illegal firearms.
Those charged include a Air Canada warehouse employee and a former Air Canada manager who gave police a tour of cargo of the facility after the theft. A jewelry store owner is also charged.
TORONTO AIRPORT HEIST: $15M CONTAINER OF GOLD, VALUABLE ITEMS STOLEN FROM CARGO FACILITY
“This story is a sensational one and which probably, we jokingly say, belongs in a Netflix series,” Peel Regional Chief Nishan Duraiappah said.
Police in Canada announced that 9 individuals will be facing charges following the country’s largest gold theft, in which 6,600 gold bars worth more than 20 million Canadian dollars were stolen from Toronto’s Pearson International airport last year. (Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press via AP)
Peel Reginal Detective Sgt. Mike Mavity said the gold bars, weighing 419 kilograms (923 pounds), and foreign currency, ordered from a refinery in Zurich, Switzerland, were transported in the haul of a Air Canada flight on April 17 last year.
He said that late afternoon a truck driver arrived at the airline’s cargo warehouse with a fraudulent bill that was provided to a airline warehouse attendant.
Mavity said a bill for seafood that was picked up the day before was used to pick up the gold. The duplicate bill was printed off at the Air Canada warehouse, he said.
“They needed people within Air Canada to facilitate this theft,” Mavity said in front of the truck police say was used in the theft.
Mavity said police are searching for the Air Canada manager who gave police a tour of the facility in the days after the theft. He said that manager left his job last summer and said they have an idea of where he is.
Mavity said some of the suspects were known to police and some were not. He said they seized six crudely made bracelets made of gold.
“I don’t think I ever imagined they would have to deal with the largest gold heist in Canadian history,” said Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, Ontario. “It’s almost out of an ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ movie or CSI.”
Air Canada employee Parmpal Sidhu, 54, from Brampton, Ontario, jewelry store owner Ali Raza, 37, from Toronto, Amit Jalota, 40, a Oakville, Ontario resident, Ammad Chaudhary, 43, from Georgetown, Ontario and Prasath Paramalingam, 35, from Brampton are among those that have been arrested. Mavity said they have been released on bail conditions and will be in court at a later date.
US MARINE ARRESTED IN TEXAS AFTER STEALING OVER $500,000 IN JEWELRY, AUTHORITIES SAY
Mavity said the truck driver that allegedly picked up the gold, Durante King-Mclean, a 25-year-old from Brampton, is currently in custody in the U.S. on firearms and trafficking related charges.
Police are searching for former Air Canada manager Simran Preet Panesar, 31, from Brampton as well as Archit Grover, 36, from Brampton and Arsalan Chaudhary, 42, from Mississauga Ontario.
Peel Regional Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich said only CA$90,000 ($65,00) of the more than CA$20 million has been recovered.
U.S. ATF Special Agent, Eric DeGree, said King-Mclean, was arrested in Pennsylvania after a traffic stop and that led to the seizure of 65 illegal firearms that were allegedly destined to be smuggled into Canada. DeGree said he tried to flee after police discovered the firearms in his rental car.
Brinks, an American cash handling company, arrived at the airport cargo facility the night of April 17 to pick up the gold and were told the gold and currency was missing after a search.
Brinks sued Air Canada over the theft last year. According to the company’s filing last year, a thief walked away with the costly cargo after presenting a fake document at an Air Canada warehouse on April 17.
In a Nov. 8 statement of defense, Air Canada rejected “each and every allegation” in the Brink’s lawsuit, saying it fulfilled its carriage contracts and denying any improper or “careless” conduct.
CANADIAN POLICE WARN THAT POSTING VIDEOS OF ALLEGED PACKAGE THIEVES COULD BE ‘VIOLATION’ OF THEIR PRIVACY
The country’s largest airline also said Brink’s failed to note the value of the haul on the waybill — a document typically issued by a carrier with details of the shipment — and that if Brink’s did suffer losses, a multilateral treaty known as the Montreal Convention would cap Air Canada’s liability.
In Federal Court filings that claim breach of contract and millions of dollars in damages, Brinks said an “unidentified individual” gained access to the airline’s cargo warehouse and presented a “fraudulent” waybill shortly after an Air Canada flight from Zurich landed at Pearson.
The statement of the claim says the staff then handed over 400 kilograms of gold in the form of 24 bars plus nearly $2 million in cash to the thief, who promptly “absconded with the cargo.”
DeGree said dozens of firearms authorities were seized, including two fully automatic weapons and five guns that were untraceable.
“I’m proud to say that we successfully put an international gun trafficking operation out of business. We kept 65 firearms off the streets of Canada and prevented them from being used in any number of crimes,” DeGree said.
Mavity said that “we believe they melted down the gold and with the profits they got from the gold they used to purchase illegal firearms.”
The Spanish government is seeking to contain a scandal linked to EU pandemic funds, categorically denying that it used European money to pay pensions, as member states prepare for tough budget talks amid deep divisions over how funding should be allocated.
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An official in Madrid with direct knowledge of how EU funds are structured told Euronews that a technical matter is being instrumentalised in a way that is “simply false”, accusing the opposition of playing politics over what it describes as an accounting issue.
A Spanish budget watchdog reported earlier this month that the government of Pedro Sánchez used budget credits linked to the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), an economic plan partly funded through common debt designed to revitalise the bloc’s economy after Covid, to partly finance Spanish pensions in November 2024.
Madrid insists it did not breach the rules.
The European Commission asked Madrid for clarification after initial newspaper reports, according to a person familiar with the matter. It did not issue a follow-up request once Madrid provided an explanation, and Spanish authorities consider the issue closed.
However, the political scandal lingers, even as Madrid insists that “not a single euro” of EU money has been misused, amid backlash in so-called frugal countries. Spain and Italy were the biggest beneficiaries of the €750 billion recovery fund approved in summer 2020 after difficult talks.
In Madrid, the opposition People’s Party has demanded that Sánchez appear before Congress to explain the matter. The issue is also making waves in the European Parliament, with strong reactions from conservative lawmakers.
“If these allegations are confirmed, we are facing a serious abuse of European taxpayers’ money,” wrote Tomáš Zdechovský (Czechia/EPP), an influential centre-right member of the European Parliament’s budgetary committee, on X. “Europe cannot tolerate any misuse of recovery funds.”
“Is €10 billion in EU funds, intended for recovery after the pandemic, quietly being used to help pay Spanish pensions? It would confirm our worst fears about these funds,” said Dirk Gotink (The Netherlands/EPP).
Madrid sources insist the issue is being overblown for political purposes.
A government official pointed to the country’s economic performance and pushed back against the frugal-versus-south narrative, which often presents the wealthier north subsidising the weaker south. “Spain is the fastest growing economy in Europe, Germany is not paying our pensions,” said a second Madrid official.
The incident does, however, underscore the additional complications the country is facing due to its inability to approve a budget in a fragmented parliament. After failing to deliver a fresh budget for 2025, Madrid was forced to roll over a plan approved in 2023.
A fight over the EU’s financial future
The timing of the controversy is particularly sensitive.
Brussels is preparing to launch negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the EU’s seven-year budget for 2028–2034, and a central question will be what to do with the roughly €750 billion in joint debt accumulated through the recovery plan.
That programme was the largest and most politically consequential collective borrowing exercise in EU history. Whether it is ultimately seen as a success or a cautionary tale will inevitably shape how member states approach future proposals for shared financing.
Spain, the second-largest recipient of the initiative’s funding with a total of around €60 billion already received, has been among the most vocal advocates for an ambitious European budget and a permanent mechanism to pool financing needs.
Spanish Finance Minister Carlos Cuerpo has argued that pooling national debt at the EU level could generate annual savings of up to €25 billion.
Cuerpo, who is now Sánchez’s number two in government, echoed remarks made by France, Mario Draghi and a number of European intellectuals calling for a more efficient borrowing mechanism that would allow the EU to tap into the European Commission’s triple-A rating and lower financing costs for all 27 member states.
While the European Commission’s current budget proposal does not include new borrowing, contentious debate lies ahead over how to finance the repayment of existing recovery debt. Frugal northern countries like the Netherlands and Germany favour strict repayment schedules, even if that means cuts to other spending programmes.
On Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated his country’s opposition, even if the German central bank has been more nuanced about the benefits and risks of pooling debt.
Southern member states, including France and Greece, are pushing to roll over the debt accumulated during the pandemic, with President Emmanuel Macron describing calls for early repayments as “idiotic”. Paris is an advocate of a European safe-asset mechanism.
A European official supportive of the plan said the Spanish controversy is being weaponised not so much against Madrid, but against proposals put forward by southern countries ahead of the budget talks.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is used to kill rollover proposal,” the diplomat said.
The issue of the next European budget will feature in an EU summit scheduled in June.
The United States and China will discuss guardrails on artificial intelligence, including establishing a protocol for keeping powerful A.I. models out of the hands of nonstate actors, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday.
Mr. Bessent, who was speaking from Beijing in an interview with CNBC, did not give more details, including when these discussions would take place. But Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Trump had been expected to discuss A.I. during their summit in the Chinese capital.
If these talks happen, it would be the first time the two countries formally take up the issue during Mr. Trump’s second term. The capabilities and usage of A.I. have grown rapidly, and so have concerns that this technology could be weaponized by hackers and terrorists, or spiral out of human control.
“The two A.I. superpowers are going to start talking,” Mr. Bessent said. “We’re going to set up a protocol in terms of, how do we go forward with best practices for A.I. to make sure nonstate actors don’t get ahold of these models.”
Still, Mr. Bessent made clear that the fierce competition between the United States and China for supremacy in A.I. — which has been a major hurdle to cooperation on safety — remained front of mind for U.S. policymakers. Officials and experts in both countries have argued that they cannot slow technological development and risk losing out to their rivals.
Mr. Bessent said that the United States was willing to cooperate with China on A.I. safety because “the Chinese are substantially behind us” in terms of the technology’s development.
“I do not think we would be having the same discussions if they were this far ahead of us. So we’re going to put in U.S. best practices, U.S. values, on this, and then roll those out to the world,” Mr. Bessent said.
Experts have suggested that China’s A.I. models may be a few months behind the leading U.S. models.
Another hurdle to the United States and China working together on A.I. safety is that they have generally focused on different potential threats.
American experts have generally highlighted existential risks, such as the possibility of artificial general intelligence, or super-intelligence that exceeds that of humans. Chinese researchers and officials have more often highlighted risks related to social stability and information control, such as the possibility of chatbots producing content that challenges China’s leadership and policies.
Still, researchers in both countries have highlighted some shared risks, such as the possibility of A.I. being used to develop new biological weapons.
Ship SEIZED near UAE coast, UK military says
Iranian forces seized a vessel 38 nautical miles off the UAE coast early Thursday, a brazen provocation occurring just as President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Beijing discussing key issues like the Strait of Hormuz.
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A ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday morning, the British military reported.
The ship was boarded and “taken by unauthorized personnel” while it was roughly 38 nautical miles northeast of the United Arab Emirates’ oil export terminal Fujairah, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported Thursday.
UKMTO spotted the ship heading toward Iranian territorial waters after the seizure, it reported Thursday.
British authorities did not release information on who the ship belonged to or who seized it. Despite the lack of official corroboration, the BBC reported that the Honduras-flagged Hui Chuan was seized in the Strait on Thursday.
CARGO SHIP ATTACKED BY SMALL CRAFT NEAR STRAIT OF HORMUZ, UK MARITIME AGENCY SAYS
Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought toward Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP)
Citing the risk-management company Vanguard, the BBC reported that the ship’s operators told Vanguard that the Hui Chuan was operating as a “floating armory” for ships in the Strait to defend themselves from pirates.
A container ship sits at anchor in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, as a motorboat passes in the foreground on May 2, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
At least two other ships have already been seized in the Strait of Hormuz since February.
IRAN SAYS ITS SMALL SUBS DEPLOYED TO STRAIT OF HORMUZ AS EXPERT EXPLAINS THREAT: ‘VULNERABLE TO DETECTION’
A cargo ship sails in the Persian Gulf toward the Strait of Hormuz on April 22, 2026. (AP Photo)
In April, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized the Panamanian-flagged MSC Francesca and the Epaminondes ships in the Strait.
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Fox News Digital contacted UKMTO and Vanguard for further information but did not immediately receive a response.
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