Murray Wood: No collector plate for you!
Murray Wood is puzzled and annoyed by all of the "collector" licence plates on vehicles that will never be def...
Prosecutors allege an Air Canada employee provided a doctored waybill that allowed another man to pick up more than $22 million in gold and currency from a Toronto Pearson airport cargo bay in what investigators have called one of the largest gold heists in Canadian history.
Parmpal Sidhu was one of the “inside men” with the knowledge and access to help carry out the 2023 heist, Crown attorney Jelena Vlacic told a Brampton, Ont., court Monday as Sidhu’s trial began.
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The trial is expected to hear evidence that the fraudulent air waybill was printed on site the day before the operation using Sidhu’s profile, and the Crown alleges he was the one who printed it, Vlacic said in her opening statement.
The driver who picked up the gold had an air waybill for a fish shipment, but the document was altered with a handwritten number for the gold shipment, she said.
The Crown alleges the driver is Durante King-Mclean, an Ontario man who U.S. authorities say fled south shortly after the heist. He was arrested in Pennsylvania in September 2023 and has since pleaded guilty in a separate case to conspiring to traffic firearms, U.S. officials said.
“Whoever provided this air waybill to Mr. Durante King-Mclean … knew exactly what he needed to have and what needed to be changed,” Vlacic said.
Sidhu pleaded not guilty Monday to theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
Prosecutors allege Sidhu was working hand in hand with Simran Panesar, another Air Canada employee at the time, to facilitate the theft for the others accused.
Panesar resigned in the months that followed the heist and was interviewed by investigators that July, court heard. The next day, he and his family left Canada and never returned, according to an agreed statement of fact read in court. A Canada-wide warrant has been issued for his arrest.
The altered waybill was only one of the steps needed to pull off the theft without getting noticed immediately, Vlacic said. In the background, the shipment’s designation as high value was removed and notes about its breakdown were changed, she said.
Yelizaveta Zaritskaya, who was Air Canada’s cargo operations manager at the time of the heist, told court her profile was used to remove the high-value designation from the gold shipment on a day when she was not working. Under questioning from the defence later, she clarified it was a crucial change that meant the shipment would be treated as regular cargo that could “pass for fish.”
Back then, she said, there were shared computers in the managers’ offices and it wasn’t uncommon for people to conduct minor functions while the computer was still logged into someone else’s profile.
“It was a bad practice,” she said.
Anyone who had access to the offices would have access to managers’ computers, including Sidhu’s, she said, adding that a lot of Air Canada’s security protocols have changed since then.
Asked by the defence whether security was lax in those days, Zaritskaya paused, then said: “It clearly was lacking since we had stolen gold.”
Zaritskaya highlighted some “concerning” points on the waybill used to pick up the gold. For one thing, she said, the number linking it to the shipment was handwritten on two separate spots when it should be typed out. “Air Canada employees should not write on the air waybill,” she said.
It also specified in which area the shipment should be stored, namely the cold storage, which is not often marked on the waybill, she said. As well, there was a tear in the document that means it wasn’t maintained to standard, she said.
However, an inexperienced attendant may not notice these issues, she said.
Earlier Monday, Peel regional police Const. Clayton Asano, testified about his role in investigating how the air waybill made its way through the cargo facility.
Court watched surveillance video from the cargo facility that showed a white truck back into the loading bay and the driver, dressed in reflective gear and a face covering, go inside and interact with Air Canada staff.
The driver handed over documents including the waybill and eventually an employee with a forklift came with the shipment and helped load it onto the truck. The truck then drove away, with the entire process playing out within an hour, court heard.
Prosecutors said the identity of the driver is not in dispute in this trial.
During cross-examination, Sidhu’s lawyers asked Asano whether handwriting analysis was conducted on the waybill. Asano said no, but clarified under re-examination by the Crown that such an analysis had been considered and ruled out because there wasn’t enough writing on the waybill or enough of a sample to compare it to.
The trial comes after prosecutors dropped the charges against two other men accused in the case.
Last month, the Crown withdrew charges against Ali Raza, a jeweller who had been accused of knowingly receiving some of the stolen gold, and Amit Jalota.
Meanwhile, a man who admitted his role in the heist was sentenced this spring to four years in prison.
Arsalan Chaudhary, who was arrested earlier in the year as he flew back from Dubai, pleaded guilty to theft over $5,000 and was given 40 years to pay back $22 million in restitution.
Chaudhary, who is considered one of the architects of the heist, is expected to testify for the prosecution in Sidhu’s trial.
Peel regional police have said 6,600 gold bars weighing more than 400 kilograms were stolen from Pearson on April 17, 2023, and had a value of more than $20 million.
The stolen gold and foreign currency were ordered from a refinery in Zurich, Switzerland, and were transported in the hull of an Air Canada flight to Toronto, police said two years ago as they released more details of the investigation dubbed Project 24K.
The gold and currency were then offloaded and brought to an Air Canada cargo facility at the airport, police said.
Later that day, a suspect presented a fraudulent airway bill to warehouse employees, who loaded the shipment onto his five-tonne truck, police alleged.
Another man accused in the case, Archit Grover, is expected to face trial next month.
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