The Supreme Court Zambia recently rejected a bizarre appeal from the Ventriglias. In their appeal, the Ventriglias challenged the decision of the Court of Appeal made on 31st January 2019 in which Dr. Rajan Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments was declared as majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement factory.
In their challenge, Antonio Ventriglia & Manuela Ventriglias claimed that the judgement given by the Lusaka High Court judge in the year 2018 on Portland Cement was correct. Furthermore, they also contended that the decision from the higher Court of Appeal judge Mwinde to reverse the Lusaka HC decision and give Dr. Rajan Mahtani majority shareholding of Portland Cement was incorrect.
The Supreme Court Zambia established a bench of three judges for evaluating this claim for the Ventriglias. These included judges Mumba Malila, Royda Kaoma and Michael Musonda. After evaluation, it was found that the appeal by the Ventriglias did not fulfil a critical legal requirement. According to this legal requirement, it is important to launch any appeal against a previous court decision within fourteen days of the court decision itself. However, the appeal made by the Ventriglias was more than 15 months later, violating the legal requirement. Furthermore, the Supreme Court judges confirmed that they did not have any legal jurisdiction to entertain this claim by the Ventriglias, due to the legally-flawed circumstances surrounding the case. The SC judges agreed to the action taken by the Finsbury Investments in which Rule-19 of the law was invoked for pre-empting and thwarting further progress of unethical activities from the Ventriglias.
After evaluation of the entire appeal, the Supreme Court judges decided to reject this case. This rejection of the appeal further confirmed Dr. Mahtani’s ownership over Portland Cement factory.
