Two accused in sensational Toronto airport gold heist are now facing separate trials, pleading not guilty

Two men set to face a jury trial together for the astonishing Toronto Pearson airport gold heist have had their hearings separated, and will each now have only a judge decide their fate.

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Parmpal Sidhu, 56, who worked at the Air Canada warehouse from where the $22-million shipment of gold bars and currency was stolen in 2023, and Archit Grover, 39, who allegedly owned the truck used to haul the shipment from the airport, will face separate trials a month apart, likely in front of different judges.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Nancy Dennison agreed to separate the prosecutions for the men, both from Brampton, Ont., on Friday, at the request of Grover’s lawyer.

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“Archit Grover stands in a different position than his co-accused who are going to trial or who are still on the run,” Grover’s lawyer, Andrew Furgiuele, told National Post. “The factual considerations relating to his co-accused have no relevance with respect to him.”

Grover was arrested May 6, 2024, at Pearson airport after he flew back to Canada from India. Peel Regional Police announced nine arrest warrants for the gold heist about three weeks before, on the first anniversary of the heist. At the time, Grover was named as a fugitive.

“Mr. Grover is looking forward to his trial with the same confidence he had when he immediately came back to Canada to face his charges after the police announced the arrest warrants. He was not guilty then, is not guilty now, and will remain so after his trial,” Furgiuele said.

Sidhu, by contrast, had been quietly arrested in Canada on April 5, 2024, almost two weeks before the splashy police announcement.

Shale Wagman, Sidhu’s lawyer, professed his client’s innocence.

“He’s pleading not guilty for sure. He’s doing fine. He’s taking it well. He didn’t do anything wrong and he’s anxious to clear his name,” Wagman told National Post.

Neither Wagman nor the Crown prosecutor, Jelena Vlacic, opposed the severance motion, according to court records.

Both accused men then switched their trial choice from a jury trial to being heard by a judge only.

They were to face a joint trial and had previously asked for it to be heard before a jury. Jury selection was scheduled to begin Oct. 1. Instead, the trial for Sidhu is now scheduled to begin Oct. 5 and run for two or three weeks, and the trial for Grover is set for two weeks in late November. Both trials are to be in their hometown of Brampton.

Sidhu and Grover face the same two charges.

Each is accused of conspiring with others to commit theft over $5,000, and of stealing gold and bank notes worth more than $5,000 that were the property of the Toronto Dominion Centre, the global headquarters for the TD Bank. Both charges are tied to the date of the airport heist: April 17, 2023.

It is a quaintness in Canada’s laws that the largest gold heist in Canadian history, and the sixth largest in the world — valued at more than $22 million gold and cash — is prosecuted at the top criminal code threshold of just a $5,000 loss.

Investigators thought that other men might be facing trial for the heist as well.

Two men are considered fugitives-at-large.

Simran Preet Panesar, who was a 31-year-old Air Canada employee at the time of the theft resigned after the heist and left Canada before he was named as being wanted. He is believed to have travelled to India.

Prasath Paramalingam, 35 at the time of his arrest in 2024 and also from Brampton, was arrested in the original police sweep but later disappeared after his release on bail. He is now considered a fugitive after failing to appear in court on Aug. 19, 2024. Paramalingam is also wanted in the United States in a related gun-running case.

While technically a fugitive in Canada, the alleged driver of the truck is not on the run. Durante King-Mclean, 25, of Brampton is in custody in the United States after police stopped a car in Pennsylvania with 65 handguns in the trunk that were being smuggled into Canada. Authorities said a portion of the stolen gold was used to fund a cross-border gun-running plot. He recently pleaded guilty to firearms trafficking charges while he is still wanted in Canada for the gold heist.

Grover is wanted in the United States for alleged involvement in the same gun-running plot.

In April, the man named as the ringleader of the heist, Arsalan Chaudhary, a 43-year-old man formerly of Mississauga, Ont., was sentenced to four years. He too had fled Canada after the grab, settling in Dubai. After negotiations by his lawyer, Chaudhary returned to Canada in January and surrendered to Peel police waiting for him at Pearson airport. He pleaded guilty to theft over $5,000.

Three other men who had been arrested for the heist have since had their charges dropped.

In April, Ammad Chaudhary, 43, from Georgetown, who had been charged with theft over $5,000 and being accessory after the fact, had his charged dropped by the Crown.

Last week, charges against two more of the accused were dropped.

Ali Raza, 39, of Toronto, who was originally accused of melting stolen gold in his jewellery store workshop, and Amit Jalota, 42, of Oakville, originally accused of helping move the stolen gold to be melted, had all charges withdrawn and left court as free men.

Vlacic, the prosecutor, said evolving evidence meant there was no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction in either of those cases. The details of the evidentiary changes cannot be published under a court-ordered publication ban.

The shipping container at the heart of the case was filled with almost-pure gold bars, weighing 400.19 kilograms, and stolen from an Air Canada cargo facility shortly after arriving on an Air Canada flight from Zurich, Switzerland.

Police said a man walked into the warehouse alone and presented an Air Canada waybill for a shipment of seafood that had already been picked up; bizarrely a warehouse employee loaded the gold shipment onto the man’s truck with a forklift.

The theft was so smooth it wasn’t noticed until three hours later when Brink’s security arrived to collect the container and nobody could find it.

Only a small fraction of the gold has been recovered.

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