A container stocked with an estimated $15 million worth of gold and “other items of monetary value” has been stolen from Canada’s busiest airport, police say.
The incident happened Monday at Pearson International airport in Toronto after a plane carrying the goods unloaded its cargo to a facility away from the airport’s passenger terminals.
“On Monday, April 17, 2023, an aircraft arrived here at the airport in the early evening. As per normal procedure, the aircraft was unloaded and cargo was transported from the aircraft to a holding cargo facility,” Peel Regional Police Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn told reporters Thursday.
“Once this cargo was offloaded at a holding facility, subsequent to its arrival, this high value container was removed by illegal means from the holding facility,” he continued. “This cargo was reported missing to the Peel Regional Police a short time later and an investigation has commenced.”
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Toronto Pearson International Airport is shown in August 2020. A theft involving a cargo container holding an estimated $15 million worth of gold and other items happened there on Monday, April 17. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Duivesteyn said authorities estimate the value of the missing container to be $15 million.
As of Friday, the whereabouts of the container is unknown and no arrests have been made.
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Toronto Pearson International airport is the busiest in Canada. (Yu Ruidong/China News Service via Getty Images)
Duivesteyn said “our investigators have their eyes open to all avenues,” according to The Associated Press.
But he noted that it was too early to say if the theft was a professional operation.
“The Greater Toronto Airports Authority is aware of the theft that took place this week. The GTAA wishes to clarify that thieves accessed the public side of a warehouse that is leased to a third party, outside of our primary security line,” the airport said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This did not involve access to Toronto Pearson itself and did not pose a threat to passengers or GTAA staff.”
An Air Canada plane takes off from Toronto Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 18, 2023. (Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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On its website, the airport said it is the “busiest” in Canada.
“In 2019, 50.5 million passengers travelled through Pearson,” the website says.
