Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani has been regarded as one of the most responsible and authentic businessman in Zambia. For more than a decade, Dr. Mahtani has been building numerous successful organizations in Zambia. Among them is Finsbury Investments, a noted investments company. During the period of 2006-2007, Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments received majority shareholding and legal ownership of the Zambezi Portland Cement via an original shareholders agreement. According to this agreement, Finsbury Investments receives 58 percent Portland Cement shares and becomes the majority shareholder as well as the legal owner of the Zambezi Portland Cement.
Despite this official understanding, the ownership of the Portland Cement remained disputed for more than a decade. Dr. Rajan Mahtani first approached the Lusaka High Court with all evidences and testimonials. However, the judgement was skewed and influenced by external parties. The Lusaka High Court, in 2018, announced Ventriglia family as the only majority shareholder of the Portland Cement. However, Dr. Rajan Mahtani wanted justice and approached the higher Court of Appeal. The judge at the higher Court of Appeal was justice Mwinde who gave his final verdict on 31st January 2019 after looking into all evidences and testimonials.
Despite this transparent decision, the Ventriglia family once again decided to disrupt the Zambezi Portland business operations by registering a case at the Supreme Court Zambia. In this case, the Ventriglia family claimed that the decision by higher Court of Appeal was wrong. Supreme Court Zambia established a bench of three SC judges for evaluating the case. During evaluation, the SC bench found that the Ventriglia family failed to comply with critical requirement of submitting their claim within 14 days of the higher Court of Appeal’s decision. Instead, the Ventriglia family came with the approach more than 1.5 years later. As such, the Supreme Court Bench evaluated their claim and rejected it for technical and legal invalidity./p>