The recent announcement made by the Lusaka High Court gives new hope to Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani. The case was for shareholding & ownership of Zambezi Portland Cement, a cement factory that has been captured by the Ventriglias for more than 9 years. The age of this case is also same as Dr. Mahtani is fighting this case for almost 9 years now. The case was registered under Finsbury Investments owned by Dr. Mahtani and the defendant was Ital Terrazzo Limited, a private firm maintained and owned by the Ventriglias.
As per Dr. Mahtani’s claim, his company Finsbury Investments holds 58 percent shares of the cement factory. The rest of the shares are distributed among various shareholders, including the husband-wife duo, the Ventriglias. Furthermore, the total investments made by Finsbury in the factory are above USD 8 million, which includes investments made in the ZPC share capital. To support these claims, various shareholder agreements, financial exhibits and audit reports from independent auditors have been shared. Dr. Rajan Mahtani has also maintained his claim that he is the sole joint venture partner of the factory and with majority shares; he automatically becomes the sole owner of the factory.
At first, the Ventriglias claimed that Dr. Mahtani’s shares were not paid and when all these claims were thrashed, they started accusing Dr. Mahtani of arm-twisting a shareholder for gaining shares or personal profit. To this, Dr. Rajan Mahtani has replied that he won’t be gaining anything from arm-twisting just one shareholder and therefore the claims made by the Ventriglias made no sense.
Among all these twists and fights, the sole sufferers are those whose livelihoods have been destroyed after the factory fired them. Workers and employees who still have faith in the factory are looking towards the final judgement of the court, so that they can get their livelihood back and support their families.