The final judgment from Court of Appeal on the Zambezi Portland Cement opened up about the good as well as the bad practices in Zambia. While the good practices included a just and honest judgment from the Court of Appeal judge; the bad practices were also revealed. The case was first registered as the Lusaka High Court where after ten years of case proceedings, the final decision was controversial. The Lusaka High Court judge announced that the Ventriglias were only shareholders of the Zambezi Portland Cement.
Refuting this judgment, Dr. Rajan Mahtani approached the Court of Appeal which announced its final decision on 31st January 2019. According to the final decision, Finsbury Investments holds 58 percent shares at the factory and is the majority shareholder of Zambezi Portland. On the other hand, Ventriglias hold 42 percent shares at the factory and are the minority shareholders. It is now clear that the legal owner of the Zambezi Portland Cement factory is Dr. Rajan Mahtani who owns Finsbury Investments.
With respect to the forgery allegations, all such allegations were refused by the judge. It was finalized that the process of mechanically placing signatures for business transactions was a common affair in Zambezi Portland Cement. It was also found that critical member of the Zambia family, Claudio Ventriglia, engaged in similar practice and therefore, all allegations were considered invalid. Also, the Court provided a timeline of three months from the date of the judgment during which all processes related to share regularization must be completed.
After the final decision was announced by the Court of Appeal judge, several news publications and reports were published with the objective of contradicting the decision from the Court of Appeal. Majority of these publications and news came from sources associated with those who lost the court battle and those who illegally took over the factory for a long time. However, almost all of these publications faded after sometime as these were inconsistent, baseless and without any evidentiary support.