‘I did everything for nothing’: Pearson Airport gold heist ringleader says fortune lost

A mastermind behind the spectacular Toronto airport gold heist lost his share of the loot after fleeing to Pakistan, where he said he was kidnapped by police, blindfolded and tortured until he told them where he hid his gold and cash.

“I did everything for nothing,” Arsalan Chaudhary, 43, of Mississauga, Ont., testified Tuesday as a reluctant witness in court in Brampton, Ont.

Chaudhary said he was the man behind the gold heist, along with an inside man who worked with Air Canada, but after they split the stolen gold and cash, worth more than $22 million, he left Canada for Pakistan, where he was grabbed by men in police uniforms.

While he was in captivity and suffering torture and threatened with death, he was connected by FaceTime video calls to his kidnappers’ colleagues in Canada; he told them where to go to get his stash of gold hidden in a Toronto-area condo, and then to his family’s nearby home to collect his cash.

“Before they could do anything further, I pretty much told them, ‘I’ll give you everything. You don’t need to do anything. You have me. My life is worth more than any money.’ They had their people go where the gold was, and they got the cash and the gold, everything.”

Once they had his loot, a hood was pulled over his head and he was driven from the small room where he had been held. When the car stopped, he said he was told to lie down on the ground and count to 30 before looking up, or they would shoot him. He counted and then got up and walked to a family member’s home in Pakistan.

Chaudhary was asked by Crown prosecutor Jelena Vlacic how he felt at that point.

“I was just thankful to be alive,” he said, “and I wanted to get the F out of Pakistan ASAP.

“All of this was not even worth it. I destroyed people’s lives. I did everything for nothing.”

Chaudhary is the star witness at the trial for a co-accused in the gold heist, Parmpal Sidhu, a former Air Canada employee in the cargo warehouse where the crate of gold and cash was stolen in 2023 shortly after arriving on a flight from Switzerland.

Although the trial is for Sidhu, who has pleaded not guilty to theft over $5,000 and conspiracy, Chaudhary said the Air Canada employee who was the key inside man at the cargo warehouse — who he planned the heist with — was Simran Preet Panesar, who is a wanted fugitive in the case, and believed to be living in India.

“I planned it,” Chaudhary said. “I pretty much planned the whole thing, with Mr. Panesar.”

Chaudhary said he and Panesar had worked on the heist for months before it came together. Their relationship was not a personal one.

“Strictly business,” Chaudhary said when asked to describe their connection. “Like, we were just talking about doing the heist.”

Chaudhary made it sound like they were a perfect match if you wanted to boost gold from the airport. They each had a particular set of skills.

Panesar knew how the Air Canada cargo system worked and Chaudhary knew everything else.

“Mr. Panesar had a great idea,” Chaudhary testified. “I didn’t know nothing about how the inside worked. That was Mr. Panesar’s job to take care of that, and it was my job to take care of the outside, once it was put on the truck.

“He knew how to get the gold out, and I told them I’ll take care of the rest.

“They trusted me, and I had certain people that I knew who I could talk to and get the job done,” he said. “People call me for certain things because I could do certain things. People trusted me because I’m loyal.”

The pair were hooked up by a mutual friend, he said, but then seemed to regret saying that. He immediately couldn’t remember who the friend was, as if to prove he still had loyalty.

Chaudhary said he agreed to the job because he needed money.

“It was COVID. I was out of a job, kind of struggling. This topic came up. We started talking about it. I didn’t take it seriously in the beginning, but eventually, it got serious.”

Their plan worked ridiculously well.

Court heard earlier how insiders at the Air Canada cargo facility used the log-in credentials of Air Canada managers to change the coding on a high-value shipment of gold and cash while the crate was still in the air, en route to Toronto from Zurich on an Air Canada jet.

The change meant the automated sorting of arriving cargo didn’t send the crate to a secure area that was locked and guarded, but into an area for general cargo. From there, an altered air waybill that was created inside the facility directed the crate of gold to be delivered to a truck that Chaudhary had arranged.

Once the crate of gold and money was loaded in the truck, Chaudhary said he followed behind the truck as it was driven to a farm up north; he couldn’t remember where, he said.

“I was behind the truck. Once we got somewhere up north, wherever it was, I cleared out the truck, and I took mine, went my way, and Mr. Panesar went his way.”

He said his share was 30 per cent of the gold. They didn’t count out the myriad of one-ounce bars, he called biscuits, they just divided the boxes that they were transported in. Each bar had a TD logo molded into it, he said. Before it was hijacked, the gold was supposed to have been delivered by Brink’s armoured transit service to the Toronto Dominion bank and the foreign cash to a currency exchange in Vancouver.

There were four men at the “north farm area,” he said: Chaudhary, Panesar, the driver, and someone he called Kiwi, but whose real name he said he couldn’t remember. The driver has been identified in court as Durante King-Mclean, a Cambridge, Ont., man who is already in prison in the United States after he was caught trying to smuggle handguns into Canada, after the gold heist.

Asked why Panesar got to take 70 per cent of it, Chaudhary said: “I don’t know. That’s the deal we made.” Did Panesar need to share his cut with others, he was asked. “That’s not my business,” he answered.

He said he was not testifying willingly. He was only there after being served a subpoena by the Crown. He pleaded guilty to theft over $5,000 in March and in April was sentenced to four years imprisonment

Chaudhary remains in custody at Maplehurst Correctional Complex, and was escorted into court by an officer. He walked with casual confidence, almost a swagger.

His testimony was jagged, peppered frequently with him saying he didn’t recall key elements, such as most names and places, times and dates. He said he had post-traumatic stress disorder from his ordeal.

“Everything was going fine, and then I was kidnapped,“ he said.

“I was kidnapped by the police over there,” he told court. The men, who he said he knew were police because they “were dressed as police,” took him somewhere, but he doesn’t know where because he was blindfolded. “And when I got there, they abused me,” he said.

“Can we skip that part,” he asked.

He said he was betrayed by people he had contacted in Pakistan to help him get equipment for melting gold and then moving money to Pakistan. Chaudhary said he melted down small batches of the stolen loot and had a friend sell the reformed gold through a jewelry store near the airport. His supposed friend in Pakistan then used an underground money transfer system to move his cash to Pakistan, where Chaudhary was heading.

Chaudhary said the man must have tipped off crooked cops. The police found him by tracking the SIM card in his phone, he said. He suspects his kidnappers let him live because he was a Canadian. The man who moved the money for him also kept a million dollars he was supposed to pass to him.

He said he left Pakistan, briefly returned to Canada but didn’t feel safe, so he moved to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He was arrested in January at Toronto airport as he got off a flight from Dubai in a planned surrender.

While Chaudhary’s testimony was dramatic and revealed information about the gold heist and what happened to a large portion of the gold, what he didn’t have much to say about was the man facing trial.

Asked by Vlacic if he knows Sidhu, who sat in court beside his lawyers, he said he did but not well.

“I just heard of him through Mr. Panesar, but I don’t really know him,” Chaudhary said. “I spoke to him on the phone, but it was like a vague conversation,” he said, and mainly as a way of reaching Panesar.

“Basically, when I couldn’t reach out to Mr. Panesar, I knew I could reach out to Mr. Sidhu to reach out to Mr. Panesar. That’s all. That’s all I knew about Mr. Sidhu.”

Chaudhary’s testimony is expected to continue on Wednesday. Sidhu’s trial is scheduled for several more days.

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