Now up to a judge to decide if airport worker was in on Pearson gold heist or a fall guy - National Post
Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out Parmpal Sidhu, who is accused in connection to the 2023 gold heist at Toronto's Pearson airport, outside court during his trial in Brampton, Ont., on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (Peter Power/Postmedia News) By Adrian Humphreys November 2, 2026 at 5:25 p.m. Last Updated: November 2, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. The case against Air Canada worker Parmpal Sidhu for helping steal more than $22.5 million in gold and cash from the airline’s cargo facility is entirely circumstantial, Crown and defence lawyers agree; their divergence on what that means leads either to “near impossible” he isn’t guilty or such an absence of evidence that “zero plus zero plus zero still equals zero.”
In closing submissions Monday, Crown prosecutor Jelena Vlacic said when the evidence presented at the Brampton, Ont., trial is added together it reveals Sidhu’s guilt for theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit theft.
“The Crown does not need to prove things to an absolute certainty, or negate every possible speculative inference,” she said. “The evidence is, of course, to be considered collectively.”
Court had heard that Sidhu, also known as Paul, was working at the Air Canada cargo processing facility at Toronto’s Pearson international airport on the evening of the gold heist in 2023, working a double shift, and was on a dinner break at the time the crate was collected by a driver.
Beyond that, she said, the evidence against Sidhu amounts to seven building blocks that together form a wall supporting a finding of guilt.
Vlacic said Sidhu, as an experienced employee at the facility, knew the airline’s internal systems; that he printed a legitimate air waybill inside the warehouse and then altered it to allow the crate of gold to be picked up by a crook; made a phone call to a colleague asking the crate be released; had a close relationship with Simran Preet Panesar, an Air Canada manager accused of masterminding the heist plot; had a connection to Archit Grover, another accused and was seen meeting with Grover afterwards; was implicated by Arsalan Chaudhary, an admitted heist planner; and is heard on police wiretaps angrily complaining of not being paid his “cut.”
The Crown’s submission to Ontario Superior Court Justice Gordon Cudjoe is that those factors make it “near impossible” that Sidhu was not part of the heist.
“Either those seven differing circumstantial factors have cosmically conspired to make Mr. Sidhu appear to be guilty of this theft, or he is guilty of this theft, and convictions of guilt should flow on each count,” she said.
Vlacic said the defence submissions don’t look at the completed picture, only present a piecemeal analysis of each piece and present a speculative, alternative explanation for it.
Shale Wagman, Sidhu’s lawyer, said it is the prosecutors, not defence, who are presenting speculative motive and meanings behind things.
“What is a collective reality when you put all the pieces together? Preet Panesar and Arsalan Chaudhary ran a strictly compartmentalized heist. On the inside, Panesar abused his 21-year workplace friendship with Paul Sidhu, or Parmal Sidhu. Panesar knew Paul’s user ID and password and used shared warehouse terminals to print the seafood waybill, just as he hijacked the accounts of two other innocent employees” to facilitate the heist.
He said his client was used as a go-between for simple messages between the two masterminds without knowing what was behind them. He said Sidhu was used without him knowing, just as Chaudhary had said he used others who unwittingly helped him get the truck and sell the gold.
He poked at Vlacic’s analogy of a series of bricks that form a wall.
“You cannot count the same brick five times and call it a wall,” he said. Most of the elements outlined by the Crown stemmed from the same fact: that Sidhu and Panesar were colleagues at Air Canada who were friendly outside of work.
“Zero plus zero plus zero still equals zero. Stacking disproven or innocent workplace facts on top of one another cannot manufacture proof of subjective criminal knowledge,” Wagman said.
“Turning an everyday chat between work friends about coffee, haircuts, slow ops, and an anniversary cake into a gold heist conspiracy is deeply unfair.”
As for the wiretaps heard at trial of an increasingly angry Sidhu seeking money, Wagman said that one explanation is that after the gold heist, Sidhu realized his boss and friend had used him without his knowledge and then fled the country leaving Sidhu as a scapegoat and his “life in ruins.” His anger and desire for money months after the heist does not retroactively prove he knew of the heist ahead of time or was involved.
Cudjoe said he would take time to weigh the evidence and make his decision. He said court would reconvene for his verdict in late January.
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