Dr. Rajan Mahtani has finally won his longest pending case which was Portland Cement Zambia case. The case was battled at the Lusaka High Court for more than a decade and when the judge at the Lusaka High Court failed to provide justice, Dr. Rajan Mahtani approached the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal is one of the highest level judiciary systems in Zambia. The judge at the Court of Appeal was justice Mwinde who gave the final judgement on the case after looking into all evidences and testimonials. This final decision was given on 31st January 2019 during the morning session of the court. According to this judgement, Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments is majority shareholder of the Zambezi Portland Cement with 58 percent shares at the factory. On the other hand, Ventriglias owned Ital Terrazzo Limited are only minority shareholders of the Zambezi Portland Cement with 42 percent shares at the factory and do not have any legal ownership over the factory. The judge also confirmed that this decision aligned with the original shareholders agreement established in the year 2007. As per this decision, it is clear that Dr. Rajan Mahtani is the actual owner of the Portland Cement Zambia factory.
Furthermore, justice Nkonde while giving the judgement also said that the judge below him was wrong in declaring Ventriglias as only shareholders of the Zambezi Portland Cement as this decision was biased and without any evidence. At the same time, all allegations related to forgery were discarded by the judge. It was announced that the process of mechanically placing signatures for business transactions was a common practice in Zambia and in fact, significant member of the Ventriglia family Claudio Ventriglia engaged in similar practice. As such, the allegations were rendered baseless. Furthermore, the judge at the Court of Appeal provided a timeline of three months from the date for the judgement for completing the share sales and regularization process.