[ad_1]
OTTAWA – Monday afternoon, a special container, approximately five to six square feet, was unloaded from a plane at Toronto’s international airport. Inside were more than 20 million Canadian dollars, about $14.8 million, gold and other valuables. It was quickly moved to a secure cargo storage facility.
Then, like so many suitcases, it disappeared.
Announcing the theft on Thursday, Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn of the Peel Regional Police, the force that patrols Toronto Pearson Airport, gave few details about how the tall container disappeared inexplicably: by “illegal means.”
Investigators have given very little information because the theft remains a mystery to them.
“We’ve had three days, so the investigators are facing all the roads,” Inspector Duivesteyn told reporters in Mississauga, Ontario, where the airport is located. “We are looking at all angles of how this item was stolen.”
While he called such thefts “extremely rare,” he declined to say who sent the containers, where the flights with the containers originated or the airlines or cargo companies that flew to the airport. He also refused to reveal his weight.
“For the public concerned about flying, there is no need to worry,” Inspector Duivesteyn said. “We do not consider this a public safety issue.”
No arrests have been made, and police have not named a suspect, although Inspector Duivesteyn has not ruled out the possibility of organized crime. Police are also unclear whether the cargo or the thieves are still in the country.
This isn’t the first time gold has gone missing at a Canadian airport.
In 1952, six out of 10 boxes of gold bars traveling on a plane from Toronto airport were lost when the plane landed in Montreal. The loss of the gold, which is worth the equivalent of 2.4 million Canadian dollars in today’s figures, has never been resolved.
And in 1974, five bars of unrefined gold, worth 4.6 million Canadian dollars in today’s money and destined for the Royal Canadian Mint, were stolen from the lockup at the Ottawa airport after the guard was threatened, with guns and handcuffs to the pipe. The thieves eventually linked up with a group known as the Stopwatch Gang who were known for their timing and efficient planning of robberies.
Peel Police are investigating the latest gold heist with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Inspector Duivesteyn vowed that it would not be an unsolved case, unlike the previous gold theft at the airport.
“It will take the best of my investigators,” he said.
[ad_2]
Source link