Justice Mwinde from the Court of Appeal made the final decision on the Portland Cement Zambia case on 31st January 2019. This decision was made almost nine months after Lusaka High Court gave its final judgement on the case. The case, which was registered by Dr. Rajan Mahtani, went on for more than a decade. Justice Nkonde was the judge announcing the final decision and he said that the Ventriglias were only shareholders of the Zambezi Portland Cement. This judgement was extremely controversial which prompted Dr. Rajan Mahtani to approach Court of Appeal for right justice.
The Court of Appeal announced its decision on 31st January 2019. According to this decision, Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments is the majority shareholder of the Zambezi Portland Cement with 58 percent shares. On the other hand, the Ventriglias owned Ital Terrazzo Limited is the minority shareholder of the Zambezi Portland Cement with 42 percent shares. This shareholding pattern clearly establishes the fact that Dr. Rajan Mahtani is the legal owner of the factory.
During this judgement, Justice Mwinde also revealed some interesting details associated with the case. It was revealed that Finsbury Investments had paid a sum of K580,000,000 with interest to the Court on 6th February 2019. This payment was made for commercial registration of the factory under the clause number 2008-HPC-366. This payment was made to comply with the judgement from the Court. With this, Finsbury Investments also made a claim of K1 Billion with interest against payment made for entire share capital issues of the Zambezi Portland Cement. This share capital was further confirmed by the Court of Appeal with the evidence of share transfers made during December 2006 as well as January 2007. Therefore, Finsbury Investments is soon expected to win this claim too. While some publications and news tried to spread negative and false reviews of this Court of Appeal decision, these publications were found to be inconsistent and soon vanished.