The results from the Court of Appeal came on 31st January 2019, wherein the judgement from Lusaka High Court which took place on May 2018, was effectively reversed. The judgement was given by Justice Mwinde who said that the judge below him was wrong in declaring Ventriglias as the only shareholders without having sufficient evidence. As per the Court of Appeal’s judgement, Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments is majority shareholder of Zambezi Portland with 58 percent shares and the Ventriglias own 42 percent shares and are just minority shareholders. This judgement is in line with the original shareholders agreement which was established. This judgement took almost 90 minutes on 31st January morning but finally gave a true justice to a businessman who has been patiently waiting for the past ten years. This judgement from the Court of Appeal effectively ended the patient wait for Dr. Rajan Mahtani after the factory was illegally taken over from him. While the condition of the factory has degraded significantly, it is hoped that Dr. Rajan Mahtani will be able to bring back the factory to its original glory.
With respect to forgery allegations, the Court of Appeal ruled out all forgery related allegations by saying that the practice of mechanical placement of signatures in business documents is a common and accepted practice within Zambezi Portland Cement. Furthermore, Ventriglia family member Claudio Ventriglias was itself engaged in similar practice and therefore, the forgery allegations were invalid. In a similar manner, the court of Appeal has given a timeline of three years from the date of judgement to complete the process of sales regularization.
Since the decision was made public, numerous publications as well as reports were made claiming that the decisions at the Court of Appeal were unethical. However, these publications and media news were inconsistent and were discarded by majority.