Canadian police are looking into a significant gold theft that happened earlier this week at Toronto Pearson International Airport, which is frequently used to transfer gold extracted from the province of Ontario.
According to local authorities, jewels and gold worth more than C$20 million ($15 million) were stolen on Monday, April 17. The theft supposedly happened at a cargo holding facility where valuable products had been transported after an airplane container carrying them had touched down at the airport in the late afternoon.
During a news conference on Thursday at the Toronto airport, inspector Stephen Duivesteyn of the Peel Regional Police said that his team is looking into “all possible avenues” and that the occurrence on Monday turned out to be quite unusual and unique. The missing airplane container, according to Mr. Duivesteyn, was roughly 5 sq. feet in size and “contained other items of monetary value” in addition to the gold.
Officials have declined to disclose whose aircraft transported the item, where it originated, or where it was headed. Thieves, according to a statement from the airport, “accessed the public side of a warehouse that is leased to a third party, outside of our primary security line”, rather than the airport itself.
Monday’s is the biggest heist to take place in Canada in the past 10 years. The last major event of its kind was the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, which occurred between 2011 and 2012 and involved the theft of 3,000 tons of syrup worth $18.7 million from a storage facility in Quebec.
