Two men charged in the Toronto Pearson Airport gold heist have their charges dropped

Two men charged in the spectacular Toronto Pearson Airport gold heist have had all charges against them dropped.

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Both men, Ali Raza and Amit Jalota, were accused of helping to move and melt the stolen gold after the heist in which a shipping crate containing $22 million in gold and cash was stolen from an Air Canada cargo warehouse.

Raza, 39, of Toronto, pegged as “the jeweller” in the heist plot, appeared in a Brampton, Ont., courtroom Wednesday afternoon dressed in a suit and tie, where he heard the news as he sat with his lawyers.

He had been accused of melting stolen gold in the basement workshop of his jewellery store and was charged with possession of property obtained by crime.

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Crown prosecutor Jelena Vlacic told Ontario Superior Court Justice Nancy Dennison that the prosecution’s case “rested upon circumstantial evidence and the inferences available from that evidence.”

As the investigation and prosecution evolved, prosecutors heard additional evidence and new details of the heist, leading the Crown to conclude there was no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction, Vlacic said. The changing landscape of the evidence impacted the prosecution of both Raza and Jalota.

The specific details of the evidence cannot be published under a court order because of a pending jury trial against those still accused in the gold heist, which is scheduled to begin next month.

On Tuesday, a similar hearing before the same judge with the same result unfolded for Jalota, 42, of Oakville.

Jalota was originally accused of bringing stolen gold to Raza for melting and redistribution. Jalota was charged with possession of property obtained by crime, theft over $5,000, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, but all charges were dropped on Tuesday.

Raza and Jalota were among the first to be arrested a year after the bewildering and internationally high-profile gold heist in 2023.

Raza is one of the proprietors of Mashallah Jewellers, according to his lawyer, Brij Mohan.

The storefront is less than 600 metres along Airport Road from the airport’s property line in a low-rise strip plaza, part of a retail hub catering primarily to South Asian and Middle Eastern interest in gold and gold jewellery. Another six gold jewellers are tenants in the plaza, with three more in the plaza to its right and still more in the plaza to its left.

“Buy, sell, trade, custom orders,” reads a sign outside. Its website projects a more luxurious experience: “Purity in every karat” it says over a video of an elegant woman wearing multiple intricate gold designs.

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, on April 17, 2023.

Even though the cargo was valued at more than $22 million, a driver 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.

On the first anniversary of the brazen theft, Peel Regional Police announced nine arrest warrants issued as part of their gold heist investigation, codenamed Project 24K.

Five of the accused were arrested in Canada and four more were listed as fugitives, although one, the driver of the truck that carted the gold out of the airport, is in custody in the United States, where he was arrested after police stopped a car in Pennsylvania and found 65 handguns in the trunk being smuggled to Canada. He has pleaded guilty to firearms charges. Authorities said a portion of proceeds from the stolen gold was used to fund a cross-border gun-running plot.

A small portion of gold from the heist was recovered, police said. It had been forged into six crudely made gold bracelets but with the purity of the gold they were worth about $90,000.

Arsalan Chaudhary, a 43-year-old man formerly of Mississauga, Ont., was found to be the mastermind, or, as Vlacic called him Wednesday, “the principal organizer and benefactor of the heist.” He was given a four-year sentence in April, along with an order to pay $22 million in restitution to Brink’s, which was moving the cargo on behalf of two clients, the TD Bank in Toronto and a foreign exchange in Vancouver.

Raza maintained his innocence. Instead of going into hiding, he agreed to an on-camera interview with CBC and gave a tour of the workshop under his store, saying his equipment is only capable of melting small amounts, a gold ring but not a gold bar.

“Mr. Raza was an innocent man — today he gets his life back,” Raza’s lawyer, Mohan, said outside of court. “Mr. Raza himself was fully cooperative with police and even reached out to the police himself.

“His business and life were destroyed by these allegations, and he can now move forward with his life,” Mohan said. “It is too early for Mr. Raza to be considering any type of legal action; he just wants his life to go back to normal.” Raza thanked his family and supporters and lawyers for believing in him.

Jalota’s lawyer, Leora Shemesh, said that despite having charges dropped, her client continues to suffer from the arrest.

“He has at all times professed his innocence and has painfully endured three years navigating the justice system. He was fortunate to have been released on bail and had the ability to continue to care for his young family, however, he was punitively punished by the national and international coverage of this case.

“His photo was printed and posted everywhere and every financial institution in Ontario refused to do business with him and his extended family — including his parents who were hard-working, honest Canadians,” Shemesh said.

“People like Mr. Jalota don’t ever receive an apology or a public retraction. There is no commentary from the police publicly that they had gotten it wrong. Instead, Mr. Jalota is forced to simply move on and pick up the pieces for himself and his family.”

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