On Friday, May 22 2015 Dr. Rajan Mahtani took a step which shocked the whole world. Dr. Mahtani filed a petition in the Lusaka High Court for dissolving the ZPC since, there was a constant fight between the actual owners, Finsbury Investments and minority shareholder, the Ventriglia family with respect to control over management.
The series of trouble started in April 2015 when the Ventriglia family took over the management of ZPC by forcefully entering into the premise of the factory. Notwithstanding the orders of the High Court, the Ventriglias went to the extent of tearing the injunction papers and then dismissing them on account of being useless. Apart from this shameful deed, the Ventriglias also dismissed PACRA’s record which states that Ventriglia family is only a minority shareholder with a stake of 42% and Finsbury Investments are the actual owners of the ZPC with a 58% stake.
The only solution to this problem was dissolution of ZPC which seems to be the centre of the problem. From the perspective of employees, they will be now safe from the clutches of the Ventriglia family who make sure that the employees work every day, but offer no salary to them at the end of the month. However, when the Ventriglia family learnt about this news, they immediately published a new story under ‘Lusaka Times’ which states that Dr. Rajan Mahtani cannot dissolve the Zambezi Portland Cement because he is not the true owner of the factory.