Pearson Gold Heist Organizer Testifies at Ex Air Canada Worker Trial

BRAMPTON: A man CBC News described as a key organizer of the biggest gold heist in Canadian history took the witness stand on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in the trial of a former Air Canada employee accused of helping pull it off. Arsalan Chaudhary, who is serving a four year sentence for his own part in the theft, testified in the Brampton trial of Parmpal Sidhu before Judge Gordon Cudjoe.

Sidhu has pleaded not guilty to theft over 5,000 dollars and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. The Crown alleges Sidhu doctored a shipping document, an air waybill, that let a truck driver pick up a crate holding more than 22 million dollars in gold and currency from an Air Canada cargo warehouse at Toronto Pearson International Airport on April 17, 2023. Peel Regional Police said the shipment held 6,600 gold bars weighing more than 400 kilograms, worth more than 20 million dollars on its own.

Chaudhary's testimony on Tuesday was careful and, at points, vague. He told the court he flew into Canada from Dubai in January, after first going to Dubai for work and a new life. He said he would contact Sidhu only to reach another man, Panesar, a second Air Canada employee named in the case who has since left Canada. Chaudhary said he could not recall specific dates and told counsel to check passport records. He denied taking part in chats or group chats with Sidhu.

Why it matters

The trial is the public's first full look at how a shipment guarded like few others walked out of a secure cargo building on a truck. The answer, from the testimony heard so far, is not a smashed lock. It is paperwork, logins and routine. Witnesses have told the court the waybill used to collect the shipment was printed inside the Air Canada warehouse using Sidhu's login credentials, though a police witness agreed Sidhu's fingerprints were not found on the document and no gold was found in a search of his home.

Earlier testimony described a cargo system with weak digital discipline, where workers shared login credentials and left workstations signed in. The court also heard about two phone calls the day before the theft, one reporting high value cargo about to enter the system and a second, about 30 minutes later, directing a priority unit to a pickup point. A station attendant testified he helped load the crate onto a truck and did not question the masked driver or the missing stamps on the paperwork. An Air Canada IT worker, Joshua Priebe, told the court he tried to think like a crook to trace how the routing of the shipment was changed, after the gold's tag was switched from high value to standard, which kept it out of the secure storage area.

The context

The gold arrived at Pearson on an Air Canada flight from Switzerland on April 17, 2023, bound for TD Bank, with Brink's responsible for moving it. Brink's staff arrived hours later to collect a crate that was already gone. Peel Regional Police called the investigation Project 24K and charged nine people by April 2024. In 2026, one suspect was convicted, the case that brought Chaudhary to the stand as a sentenced witness, and prosecutors dropped charges against three others.

Sidhu's trial began on Oct. 5, 2026, in Brampton. He chose trial by judge alone. His lawyer, Shale Wagman, has pressed witnesses on what the evidence actually ties to Sidhu, including messages the Crown calls suspicious, and has suggested ordinary work explanations for them. The defence position running through the cross-examinations is that a shared login and a printed document do not prove who did what in a busy cargo warehouse.

Police believe very little of the gold was melted down at a Mississauga jewelry store and that most of it may have been sent to Dubai and India, where serial numbers could be melted away. Almost none of the gold has been recovered in public reporting.

What happens next

The trial continues in Brampton with the Crown building its case document by document and witness by witness. The questions that will decide it are narrow. Did Sidhu create or alter the waybill himself? Did he know what the document would be used for? And can the Crown place him, rather than his login, at the center of the pickup? Chaudhary's evidence on Tuesday, the point where the organizer and the accused met on the record, gave the court contact between them but little detail. Judge Cudjoe will decide the case on the whole record, not on any single day.

Key numbers

The theft: April 17, 2023, at Toronto Pearson. The shipment: 6,600 gold bars, more than 400 kilograms, plus currency, worth more than 22 million dollars in total. People charged by April 2024: nine. Chaudhary's sentence: four years. Sidhu's trial start: Oct. 5, 2026, judge alone, not guilty plea.