Here's how the U.S. trial of a Canadian linked to the Pearson gold heist could play out
CBC
The first of two trials connected to the headline-grabbing multimillion-dollar gold heist at Toronto's Pearson International Airport last year is scheduled to begin in September in a Pennsylvania court, but two of the accused are still in Canada.
Archit Grover and Prasath Paramalingam, who have been charged in the 2023 theft of gold from an Air Canada cargo facility, are also accused of being part of a firearms smuggling ring with another gold heist suspect.
In September 2023, Pennsylvania State Police pulled over Durante King-McLean in Franklin County after they say he committed several traffic offences. Grand jury documents list 65 firearms that were allegedly found in his vehicle. Police say those firearms were destined for Canada.
King-McLean is also the man Peel Regional Police allege was behind the wheel of a white cube van that made off with more than $20 million in gold and foreign currency from the Air Canada cargo facility months earlier, in April.
The Canadian, who was in the United States illegally, has been in custody there since his arrest. He has pleaded not guilty to six very serious firearms-related charges.
A Florida woman will also be tried with King-McLean as an accessory after the fact. She is not facing any charges in Canada connected to the gold heist.
Paramalingam is accused of helping King-McLean enter the U.S., traffic the firearms, secure money for the scheme and arrange an Airbnb in Florida.
Grover is alleged to have been an accessory to the crime.
When police in Peel Region, just west of Toronto, announced the arrests in April at a joint news conference with U.S. authorities, they alleged that some of the profits from the gold heist were used by some of the accused to buy firearms in the U.S. with the intent of smuggling them across the border and selling them in Canada.
According to the U.S. grand jury documents, Paramalingam exchanged a large sum of Canadian currency into U.S. dollars one month after the heist and personally delivered it to King-McLean south of the border.
In an initial news release on the arrests, the U.S. Department of Justice alleges that Paramalingam and others had been involved in the plan to smuggle weapons across the border since April 2023.
The U.S. Justice Department is tight-lipped about its plans for the two accused men in Canada and whether it intends to make an extradition request, but if it wants a speedy trial, it is unlikely to do so, a legal expert said.
"Extradition can be time consuming," said Robert Currie, a law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax who specializes in extradition matters, adding that on average, the extradition process can take anywhere from 18 months to three years.
"Particularly if individuals contest being extradited. So I imagine what the American prosecutors are doing is moving forward with the prosecutions that they have in hand and will wait for the extradition of the other two individuals," Currie said.
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