Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani Announced Majority Shareholder And Owner Of Portland Cement Zambia Factory

For a long time, Dr. Rajan Mahtani fought for transparency, ethics and justice from different courts in Zambia. First it was Lusaka High Court wherein the case was registered by Dr. Rajan Mahtani claiming that his factory was illegally taken over from him. Despite sharing numerous evidences and testimonials, the court took more than a decade to announce the final judgement for the case. After that too, the final judgement from the Lusaka High Court was extremely controversial. The judge at the Lusaka High Court was justice Nkonde according to whom, Ventriglias were announced as only shareholders of the Zambezi Portland Cement. To counter this misdirected judgement, Dr. Rajan Mahtani then approached the Court of Appeal.

On 31st January 2019, the final judgement for the Portland Cement Zambia case was announced at the Court of Appeal. According to this judgement, Dr. Rajan Mahtani is the majority shareholder of the Portland Cement Zambia factory as his company; Finsbury Investments holds 58 percent shares. On the other hand, Ventriglias were declared as minority shareholders as their entity, Ital Terrazzo Limited held only 42 percent shares at the factory and were considered as minority shareholders without any legal ownership. With this judgement, justice Mwinde from the Court of Appeal effectively reversed the judgement from the Lusaka High Court which held that Ventriglias were only shareholders of the Zambezi Portland Cement.

With respect to forgery related allegations, all such allegations were discarded by the judge. It was found that the process of mechanically placing signatures was a common practice at Zambezi Portland Cement. It was also found that critical member of the Ventriglia family, Claudio Ventriglia, engaged in similar practice when conducting business transactions. As a result, all forgery allegations were dismissed by the Court of Appeal judge. Furthermore, all parties were directed by the Court of Appeal judge to complete their share sale and regularization process within three months from the date of the judgement.

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