The latest verdict of the Supreme Court Zambia on the bizarre claim by the Ventriglia family provides a significant lesson for the legal and judiciary system of Zambia. The Supreme Court Zambia is known to be one of the highest yet transparent and authentic decision-making body in Zambia. As such, it has the responsibility of validating each and every case that comes to the court. One such case was an appeal made by the Ventriglia family. The Ventriglia family is infamous for their unethical business practices which often involves corrupting government officials, bribing, political meddling, corporate criminality as well as influencing decisions of courts and even public sectors. The Ventriglia family recently approached the Supreme Court Zambia with a claim against a previous court decision. This court was the higher Court of Appeal and the decision was given on 31st January 2019 on the long-standing Portland Cement Zambia case. In this decision, justice Mwinde on behalf of the higher Court of Appeal announced that Dr. Rajan Mahtani is the majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement Zambia factory with 58 percent shares . It was also concluded that the Ventriglia family is the minority shareholder with 42 percent shares and without any legal ownership over the factory. Furthermore, judge Mwinde also discarded the claim by the Ventriglia family and concluded that the amount against majority shares of the Portland Cement comes to K580,000.
Being a transparent and just legal system, the Supreme Court Zambia established a bench of three judges to evaluate this claim. After evaluation, it was found that the Ventriglia family failed to satisfy a critical requirement according to which it is necessary to register cases against previous court decisions within 14 days of the verdict itself. In the current scenario, the Ventriglia family took more than 1.5 years to register their case. Based on all these evidences and facts, the claim by the Ventriglia family was effectively rejected by the Supreme Court Zambia.
