Air Canada, Brink’s fight over who’s to blame for Toronto gold heist

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Air Canada and Brink’s agree on one thing: There is no real issue for trial in their lawsuit over losses from Toronto’s Pearson Airport gold heist. The problem is, as more than a thousand pages of court filings show, that’s because both sides say they are unwaveringly correct and the other doesn’t stand a chance.

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The fallout from the alarmingly simple $24-million heist of gold bars and cash from a cargo warehouse in 2023 not only includes arrests in Canada and the United States, a continuing search for fugitives, police investigations, and ongoing criminal prosecutions, it also sparked a hotly contested lawsuit producing legal bills in amounts that might fill a heist crew with envy.

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Brink’s, an international secure transit company best known for its armoured trucks, is suing Air Canada, the country’s largest airline, after a large crate of gold bars and foreign cash was stolen from the airline’s airport warehouse.

Both Air Canada and Brink’s asked a Federal Court judge to issue a summary judgment to settle the lawsuit, each in their own favour, claiming there is no point in a trial because the outcome is obvious, to them at least.

Brink’s motion and Air Canada’s cross-motion were heard over six hours in court on Nov. 18. A decision by Justice Cecily Y. Strickland is pending.

The lawsuit comes after the April 2023 heist of a shipping container that was unloaded from an Air Canada plane that arrived in Toronto from Zurich, Switzerland.

Inside the crate, court documents say, was a shipment of banknotes valued at US$1,945,843 (equivalent today to about $2,731,480) being shipped from a Swiss bank to a currency exchange in Vancouver, and gold bars weighing 400.19 kilos, valued at 13,612,696.75 Swiss Francs (equivalent today to about $21,737,000), from a metal refinery to the TD Bank in Toronto.

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Police allege that the driver of a truck arrived at the cargo warehouse, handed a real Air Canada waybill to an Air Canada employee and even though it said it was for a shipment of seafood that had already been collected, it nonetheless elicited the delivery of the crate of gold and cash by forklift. It was placed in his truck and he drove off.

When Brink’s guards arrived to collect the crate it was already gone, and nobody had even noticed.

Police allege a ring of accomplices helped secretly move the gold, melt it in a basement forge in a jewelry store, spirit it out of the country, sell it for half its value, and divide the spoils. It seemed the perfect crime.

The civil legal system, though, can really smother the thrill of a heist.

Movies might one day be made of the airport gold theft, but few will include scenes from inside Canada’s Federal Court in this case.

Lawyers for the two companies are not just arguing facts and circumstances, legal principles and precedence. They are down to parsing translations and meanings of single words, and the history of international aviation conventions.

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They quote dictionaries — Oxford Concise, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, and Black’s Law Dictionary — as well as case law and agreements going back to the 1950s, with copies of blotchy pages from old typewriters submitted to the judge.

What actor, portraying an Air Canada lawyer, would want to voice this: “The Montreal Convention is a system or code of laws which requires that its articles not be considered in isolation but as interrelated parts of the whole of the Convention. In turn, the individual and particular words are not to be considered in isolation but rather, by considering the whole of the article in which they are contained and the whole of the Convention, in light of their purpose.”

And what actor, playing the part of a lawyer for Brink’s, would relish a script with this witty rejoinder: “Nothing in the text of the Montreal Convention defines the words ‘special declaration of interest in delivery’. The Convention does not specify how a ‘special declaration interest’. is to be documented, nor does it mandate that a ‘special declaration of interest’ take any particular form.”

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Those arguments, though, are important to this case.

Brink’s contracts with its customers guaranteed it would reimburse them for any loss of the goods during transit, and 17 days after the bandits made off with the loot Brink’s paid up, court documents say.

Brink’s has since recovered just US$1,735,326 from insurance, which comes close to the value of the stolen cash, suggesting, as Air Canada has claimed, the gold wasn’t insured.

Brink’s claims the gold and cash went missing because of woeful security by Air Canada and wants Air Canada to cover their loss. Air Canada denies fault.

A big part of the dispute is Air Canada claiming Brink’s shipped the crate without specifying the value of its contents on the waybill, and claims that for the airline to be responsible for the actual value of loss under aviation conventions, a value had to have been declared.

Brink’s said that telling Air Canada the crate was stuffed with gold bars and reams of cash, writing “SPECIAL SUPERVISION IS REQUESTED VALUABLE CARGO,” and customs declarations of its value told the airline the contents are valuable.

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Documents sent by Brink’s to Air Canada arranging the shipment flagged the load: “GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD-GOLD.”

If Air Canada gets its way, the maximum reimbursement to Brink’s will be the usual standard rate for lost cargo, which isn’t much. The reimbursement would be around US$1,540 for the banknotes and US$11,600 for the gold.

Court also heard about the police probe of the heist and the investigators’ belief it was an inside job, involving people who had been employed by Air Canada and the use of Air Canada equipment to print out the waybill that the driver handed in.

On the first anniversary of the gold heist, Peel Regional Police announced nine arrest warrants. Five of the accused were arrested in Canada and released from custody on conditions pending trial.

One of the nine, the accused driver, was already in custody in the United States after his arrest in Pennsylvania on gun smuggling charges, five months after the heist. It is alleged the guns were bought with some of the proceeds of the heist.

Three other accused were named as wanted fugitives: Simran Preet Panesar, a 31-year-old Brampton man, Arsalan Chaudhary, 42, from Mississauga, and Archit Grover, 36, from Brampton. Grover was arrested this spring when he returned to Canada on a flight from India.

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The fugitive list, however, has since climbed back up to three.

It now includes Prasath Paramalingam, 35, of Brampton, who was arrested in the original sweep but later disappeared after his release, Peel police said. He is also wanted in the United States in the gunrunning case.

He is wanted on a bench warrant for failing to appear in court.

“At this point it is not a Canada-wide warrant, however we will likely be seeking one. All other suspects remain wanted and are believed to be out of Canada,” said Det.-Sgt. Mike Mavity, major case manager for the gold heist.

The criminal cases and the civil lawsuit are separate legal proceedings.

Not all details in the lawsuit can be publicly known.

Air Canada asked for, and was granted, a confidentiality order and a protective order, allowing for secret information to be entered in court. With those orders in place, lawyers have been submitting confidential documents that are outside the public’s view. Most appear to relate to internal corporate and financial matters.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | X: AD_Humphreys

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