Nearly $15 million worth of gold and valuables stolen in a robbery from Toronto’s Pearson Airport

A container containing gold and other “high value” items worth at least CA$20 million (more than $14.8 million) was stolen from Toronto’s Pearson Airport on Monday, police said.

The cargo arrived on a plane early in the evening, Peel Regional Police Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn told reporters on Thursday. The container was then unloaded and transported to a holding facility in accordance with standard airport procedures for air cargo.

Some time later, the approximately five square meter container was “illegally removed” and shortly thereafter reported to the police as missing.

“The container contained a high-value cargo,” said Inspector Duivesteyn. “It contained gold but was not exclusively gold and contained other items of monetary value.”

Police could not confirm the ultimate destination of the cargo, or whether the theft was linked to organized crime or professional thieves. They also weren’t sure if the gold was still in the country.

Inspector Duivesteyn stressed that while this type of robbery is “very rare”, it is an isolated case and does not pose a permanent threat to public safety. Operations at Pearson would continue as normal, he said.

“GTAA would like to clarify that thieves accessed the public side of a warehouse leased to a third party outside of our primary line of security. This did not affect access to Toronto Pearson itself and posed no threat to passengers or GTAA employees,” the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which operates Pearson, said in a statement to CBS News.

In 1953, 10 cases of gold bars disappeared from Pearson (then Malton Airport) en route to Montreal in a robbery that was never solved, according to the Toronto Star.

Eighty years later, Duivesteyn seemed determined not to let history repeat itself.

“Our goal now is to solve this theft,” he assured reporters. “Our team is assembled. They are hard at work on this case.”