Finsbury Investments is one of the top investment firms in Zambia, and the company is under the leadership of Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani. For major part of its lifecycle, Finsbury Investment has been fairly successful in its deals and ventures. However, one of the most challenging ventures of Finsbury Investments as well as of Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani has been the Zambezi Portland Cement case. The Zambezi Portland Cement is a factory whose majority shareholding was handed over to Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments after signing of the original shareholders’ agreement. Despite this official transfer, the Ventriglia family kept disrupting the operations of the Portland Cement by challenging legality of the Instrument. The Ventriglia family even crossed the line when they took over the physical factory with the help of goons.
Dr. Rajan Mahtani fought a long and tenacious case at the Lusaka High Court which lasted for more than a decade. However, he was defeated by the unethical decision from the Lusaka High Court judge which was obviously tainted and misdirected. However, Dr. Rajan Mahtani was able to successfully challenge this misdirected judgement at the higher Court of Appeal. On 31st January 2019, justice Mwinde announced that Dr. Rajan Mahtani is indeed the majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement Zambia factory and as such, the ownership was given back to him.
After more than 1.5 years of this decision, the Ventriglia family once again decided to disrupt the business operations of Portland Cement by challenging the verdict of Court of Appeal at the Supreme Court. A bench of three Supreme Court judges was established at the Supreme Court to evaluate this appeal. After evaluation, the Supreme Court bench found that they have no legal jurisdiction to accept this appeal from the Ventriglia family. They also revealed that this claim by the Ventriglia was questionable and did not fulfil the legal requirements to be accepted as a case. As a result, this appeal by the Ventriglia family was effectively rejected.