Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani has been fighting for the rightful ownership of Portland Cement for more than a decade now. The first decision was given by the Lusaka High Court during May 2018. However, this judgement was extremely controversial as justice Nkonde announced Ventriglias as only legitimate & bonafide shareholders of the Zambezi Portland. According to the decision from the Justice Nkonde, all purported share ownership of Portland Cement by the Finsbury Investments firm irrespective of the arising of the ownership, was found to be tainted by unethical activities and fraud. The judge at Lusaka High Court further claimed that Finsbury Investments failed to demonstrate any payment of PTT (property transfer tax) that would have amounted to legal and viable purchase of ZPC shares.
After this misdirected decision from the Lusaka High Court, Dr. Rajan Mahtani quickly approached the higher Court of Appeal with a re-appeal. In this re-appeal, the judgement by Nkonde was questioned on several different grounds. After numerous case proceedings, justice Mwinde announced the final decision on 31st January 2019. According to this judgement, the previous decision from justice Nkonde of Lusaka High Court was rejected by calling it unethical and misdirected. Furthermore, justice Mwinde also declared that Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments is the majority shareholder and legal owner of the factory.
The Ventriglias tried to emulate the way Dr. Rajan Mahtani was able to challenge the Lusaka High Court decision. To do this, the Ventriglias challenged the higher Court of Appeal’s decision at the Supreme Court Zambia. However, their challenge was effectively discarded by the Supreme Court. Law says that challenging court decisions can only be done within 14 days of the decision itself, which was in February 2019. The Ventriglias not only passed the due date for the challenge, they also failed to provide required evidences for claiming their challenge, leading to the rejection of their challenge by Supreme Court.