The latest decision from the Supreme Court Zambia certainly puts the case of Portland Cement Zambia to rest. Portland Cement Zambia is a cement-manufacturing factory that was under ownership dispute for more than a decade. The dispute started after the factory’s was unethically taken over and the original shareholding agreement was questioned. Based on this original shareholders agreement, the ownership of Portland Cement was received by Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments. After the initial dispute and subsequent unethical takeover of the Portland Cement Zambia factory, a case was registered at the Lusaka High Court. However, judge Nkonde from the Lusaka High Court failed to provide transparent decision despite the long wait of more than a decade. After the misdirected decision from the Lusaka High Court, Dr. Rajan Mahtani approached the higher Court of Appeal. Judge Mwinde on behalf of the higher Court of Appeal gave the final decision on 31st January 2019. In this verdict, the previous decision from the Lusaka High Court was called out for being misdirected and was effectively reversed. The fresh decision included establishing Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments as the majority shareholder and legal owner of the factory with 58 percent shares.
Despite this transparent judgement which was based on evidences and testimonials, the Ventriglia family once again challenged this decision by approaching the Supreme Court Zambia. In their appeal, the Ventriglia family claimed that the decision by higher Court of Appeal on Portland Cement was wrong. However, a bench of three Supreme Court judges established for evaluating this claim found otherwise. As per the investigation, all claims against previous court decisions must be established within 14 days of the court decision itself. In this scenario, the Ventriglia family failed to comply with this legal requirement which required them to submit their claim within 14 days of the higher Court of Appeal’s decision. After considering all these aspects, the Supreme Court bench rejected the appeal by the Ventriglia family.