Fugitive arrested in Toronto's Pearson Airport gold heist case after flying from Dubai to same airport as theft

One of the fugitives wanted for the high-profile $20-million Toronto airport gold heist was arrested Monday at the same airport from where the gold was stolen in 2023, after flying from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Arsalan Chaudhary, a 43-year-old man formerly of Mississauga but now listed by police as having no fixed address, was one of three fugitives after Peel Regional Police identified 10 people allegedly participating in what investigators called the largest gold heist in Canadian history.

In the Toronto Pearson gold heist a shipping container filled with the equivalent of 6,600 bars of almost pure gold, weighing 400.19 kilograms, was stolen from an Air Canada cargo facility shortly after arriving on an Air Canada flight to Toronto from Zurich, Switzerland, on April 17, 2023.

The valuable shipping container was fraudulently picked up at the warehouse by a truck driver using an old Air Canada waybill within hours of it arriving from Switzerland.

The gold was valued at the time at more than $20 million. The shipping container also contained foreign currency worth about $2.5 million. The contents were being delivered by Brink’s on behalf of two clients.

Police have recovered only about  $90,000 worth of that gold, that had been melted and fashioned into crude bracelets in a Toronto-area jewellery store, police said. Investigators also found $430,000 in Canadian currency, believed to be some of the profit from the sale of the gold.

There is no new information on the gold or the proceeds from it, Mavity said.

Chaudhary is charged with theft over $5,000, two counts of possession of property obtained by crime, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

He attended the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton and was held for a bail hearing.

In video by Postmedia’s Joe Warmington , Chaudhary — with his hands handcuffed behind his back — is led by two Peel police officers through the airport’s international arrivals section. He is wearing a grey hoodie under a grey ski vest with his head down.

He did not comment or answer questions on his return to Canada before he was placed in a waiting police cruiser.

Two people remain outstanding in the probe, which involved Peel police’s collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Simran Preet Panesar, 33, from Brampton, is believed to be in India. He quit his job as a manager at the cargo warehouse where the gold was taken a few months after the heist and disappeared. He is wanted for theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. An extradition request has been submitted.

Prasath Paramalingam, 36, from Brampton, was arrested in the original sweep but later disappeared after his release. He is the subject of a judge’s bench warrant for arrest after failing to appear in court on Aug. 19, 2024. Paramalingam is also wanted in the United States in a related gunrunning case.

Police say some of the proceeds from the stolen gold were used to buy black-market guns in the United States to smuggle into Canada. The alleged driver in the gold heist, Durante King-Mclean, also from Brampton, was arrested afterwards in Pennsylvania driving a car stuffed with handguns en route to Canada, U.S. authorities said.

A former fugitive in the case, Archit Grover, also from Brampton, was arrested in 2024 , also after a Monday flight to Pearson airport, after he stepped off a plane arriving from India. He was charged with theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

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