As per the final judgement of Court of Appeal, Dr. Rajan Mahtani is the majority owner of Zambezi Portland Cement. The case had been going on for more than ten years now and during this time, the condition of the factory degraded significantly. In the year 2018, the Lusaka High Court judge who was overseeing the case of Portland Cement between Dr. Mahtani and the Ventriglias announced its final judgement. As per this final decision, Ventriglias were only majority shareholders for Zambezi Portland Cement. However, this decision was given without proper evidence and proper documents and therefore, was questioned by many.
This decision was effectively reversed on 31st January 2019 when the judge from Court of Appeal announced Finsbury Investments as majority shareholders. This judgement was given by Justice Mwinde Siavwapa and took more than 90 minutes during the first half of the morning court proceedings. As per this judgement, Finsbury Investments is majority shareholder of Zambezi Portland with 58 percent shares and the Ventriglias own 42 percent shares with minority shareholders. This automatically gives legal ownership to Finsbury Investments and Dr. Rajan Mahtani. During this decision at Court of Appeal, the justice also condemned the act by Justice NKonde of Lusaka High Court, the justice below him, of the inconsistent decision making which was also against the law. The newly established decision on shareholding pattern is also aligned with the original Shareholders Agreement which was established during the year 2007.
In terms of forgery allegations, the court dismissed the allegations entirely by saying that the practice of placing mechanical signatures across business documents is a common practice in Zambezi Portland and Claudio Ventriglias, an important member of the Ventriglias family, was involved in similar practice. Both parties have been given a timeframe of three months from the judgement date to reshuffle the sales of the shares as per the new shareholders agreement.
