Early Monday night, a particular container, about 5 to six sq. toes, was unloaded from an airplane at Toronto’s worldwide airport. Inside it was greater than 20 million Canadian {dollars}, about $14.8 million, in gold and different valuables. It was swiftly moved right into a safe cargo holding facility.

Then, like many a suitcase, it vanished.

Announcing the theft Thursday, Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn of the Peel Regional Police, the drive that patrols Toronto Pearson Airport, supplied few particulars about how the high-value container had disappeared past maybe the apparent: by “illegal means.”

The investigators gave so little data apparently as a result of the theft remained a thriller to them.

“We are three days in, so our investigators have their eyes open to all avenues,” Duivesteyn instructed reporters in Mississauga, Ontario, the place the airport is. “We are looking at all angles of how this item was stolen.”

While he known as such thefts “very rare,” he declined to say who had shipped the container, the place the flight with the container had originated or which airline or cargo firm had flown it into the airport. He additionally declined to reveal its weight.

“For the public worried about flying out, there should be no concern,” Duivesteyn mentioned. “We do not consider this a public safety matter.”

No arrests have been made, nor did the police identify any suspects, though Duivesteyn didn’t rule out the chance that organised crime was concerned. It can also be unclear to the police if the cargo or the thieves are even nonetheless within the nation.

It will not be the primary time that gold has vanished at a Canadian airport.

In 1952, six of 10 packing containers of gold bullion travelling on a airplane from Toronto’s airport had vanished by the point the airplane landed in Montreal. The disappearance of the gold, which had a worth equal to 2.4 million Canadian {dollars} in as we speak’s figures, was by no means solved.

And in 1974, 5 unrefined gold bars, price 4.6 million Canadian {dollars} in present cash and destined for the Royal Canadian Mint, had been stolen from a lockup in Ottawa’s airport after a guard was threatened with weapons and handcuffed to a pipe. That theft was in the end attributed to a gaggle often called the Stopwatch Gang that grew to become well-known for timing and planning its heists effectively.

The Peel police are investigating the newest gold theft with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Duivesteyn vowed that it could not turn out to be an unsolved case, in distinction to the earlier gold theft on the airport.

“This will take the best of my investigators,” he mentioned.