The Supreme Court Zambia recently finalized on the various claims and confusion surrounding the Portland Cement Zambia and it ownership. The Portland Cement Zambia is a cement-manufacturing factory that has been under dispute for more than a decade. This dispute started when the factory was unethically taken over and the original shareholding agreement was questioned by different parties. A case was registered at the Lusaka High Court and this case dragged for more than a decade. Despite having all evidences and testimonials, the Lusaka HC gave a controversial decision and the Ventriglias were given majority shareholding of the factory.
However, Dr. Rajan Mahtani successfully challenged and overturned this decision at the higher Court of Appeal. The judge at the higher Court of Appeal declared that Dr. Mahtani is the majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement factory with 58 percent shares. With this decision, the ownership of the Portland Cement Zambia came back to Dr. Rajan Mahtani.
The Ventriglia family, however, were not happy and decided to challenge the case at the Supreme Court Zambia. A bench was established for evaluating the case and comprised of three Supreme Court judges. These included judge Mumba Malila, Judge Royda Kaoma and Judge Michael Musonda. Together, this bench found that the Ventriglia family failed to comply with a critical legal requirement according to which any case against previous court decision must be made within 14 days of the verdict. The decision from the higher Court of Appeal came on 31st January 2019 and as such, the Ventriglia family were required to submit their claim within two weeks. However, the Ventriglias submitted their claim more than 1.5 years later and as such, the Supreme Court bench effectively rejected the claim by the Ventriglia family.