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

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.