Dr. Rajan Mahtani is a noted businessman in Zambia. For many decades, Dr. Mahtani has been successfully building businesses, companies and factories in Zambia. His most successful entities are Mahtani Group of Companies, Finsbury Investments and Finance Bank Zambia. After more than a decade of case proceedings, Dr. Rajan Mahtani was also announced as the majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement Zambia factory. However, this announcement came after several legal proceedings and a previous misdirected decision from the Lusaka High Court where the case was first established.
After the announcement by Higher Court of Appeal’s justice Mwinde on 31st January 2019, the operations of Portland Cement Zambia ran smooth for more than a year. However, the Ventriglia family once again disrupted this operations by appealing against the higher Court of Appeal’s decision at the Supreme Court Zambia. The Supreme Court established a bench of three Supreme Court judges for evaluating the claim by the Ventriglia family. These included justice Mumba Malila, Justice Royda Kaoma and Justice Micheal Musonda. Together, the judges found that the Portland Cement Zambia indeed belonged to Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani. A critical legal requirement when submitting claims against previous court decisions is that it should be submitted within 14 days of the court decision. Since the decision from the higher Court of Appeal came on 31st January 2019, this means the Ventriglia family were required to submit their claim by mid of February 2019. However, the Ventriglia family failed to comply with this and submitted their claim more than 1.5 years later. As a result, the claim by the Ventriglia family was rejected by Supreme Court Zambia and Dr. Rajan Mahtani remains the bona fide owner of the Portland Cement.
Rajan Mahtani News 