Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani has spent decades building businesses in Zambia, fighting over major corporate assets and pursuing disputes that have reached courts in Zambia, the United Kingdom and Malawi. His record includes a landmark victory for a former bank he controlled in Malawi, a substantial defeat in a London lawsuit over the sale of Finance Bank Zambia, and a continuing legal controversy involving the ownership of Zambezi Portland Cement.
The most important distinction in examining his career is between allegations, judicial findings and unresolved claims. Mahtani has faced accusations relating to suspected money laundering and alleged forgery, but those accusations must not be presented as convictions. At the same time, court rulings against his legal positions and the financial consequences of disputed business transactions deserve close scrutiny.
Mahtani was born on February 14, 1948, in Zambia, according to a May 2026 profile by Billionaires.Africa. That would make him 78 years old. He qualified as a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants and obtained a doctorate in commercial law, according to the same publication. In 1986, he founded Finance Bank Zambia, building it into a substantial privately owned lender with a reported network of 73 branches and more than 1,000 employees. The institution became central to his business career and, eventually, one of his most consequential legal disputes.
One of the longest-running controversies surrounding Mahtani concerns Zambezi Portland Cement, a cement manufacturer established by the Ventriglia family in Zambia. The dispute arose from competing claims about share ownership, contractual rights and control of the business. Mahtani’s interests were associated with Finsbury Investments Limited, while members of the Ventriglia family maintained that they had rights arising from the company’s original ownership and subsequent arrangements.
The conflict generated years of litigation and allegations about the legitimacy of share transfers and corporate control. It also led to criminal proceedings concerning share-transfer documents. These developments are particularly important because the existence of a dispute over ownership does not, by itself, establish that a party committed fraud. The relevant question is what the courts decided in each proceeding, and whether those decisions resolved the underlying issues or only procedural questions.
The criminal proceedings became a significant issue in the Zambian Supreme Court. Court records show that Mahtani and two other people were initially charged in January 2011 with offences involving forgery and uttering false documents relating to Zambezi Portland Cement share-transfer forms filed with the Patents and Companies Registration Agency. The Director of Public Prosecutions entered a nolle prosequi in April 2012, a procedural step that discontinued the prosecution at that stage.
The matter resurfaced in 2015, when the prosecution sought to reinstitute charges based on the same underlying allegations. Mahtani challenged the renewed proceedings, arguing that a release and compromise agreement protected him from further prosecution on those facts. The dispute eventually reached the Supreme Court in Attorney General v Rajan Mahthani, Appeal No. 4 of 2020.
On April 8, 2025, the Supreme Court rejected Mahtani’s preliminary objection to the Attorney General’s appeal. Among other things, the court held that the earlier civil proceedings did not automatically prevent the state from pursuing criminal proceedings because the parties, legal questions and standards of proof differed. The ruling was not a criminal conviction and did not establish that Mahtani was guilty of forgery. It meant that his procedural objections did not stop the appeal from proceeding.
A further Supreme Court ruling on July 24, 2025, rejected Mahtani’s application seeking the recusal of judges hearing the matter. The court said the application lacked sufficient factual support and dismissed it with costs. That ruling addressed the recusal application, not the ultimate question of criminal guilt. The published material reviewed here does not establish a final conviction arising from these allegations. The status and ultimate outcome of the substantive proceedings should therefore be verified against the latest court record before any publication describes them as concluded.
Another major chapter concerns Finance Bank Zambia and its sale to Atlas Mara, the banking group co-founded by former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond and entrepreneur Ashish Thakkar. The transaction was agreed in 2015, with the bank’s value reported at approximately $215 million. The sale involved a complex payment structure, including an upfront component and additional consideration subject to contractual conditions. Mahtani and other former shareholders later argued that Atlas Mara had failed to pay sums owed under the agreement.
In November 2023, the dispute went to trial in the English High Court. The claimants sought damages that reporting put at up to $100 million, arguing that the buyer had breached the sale agreement and that the sellers had not received the consideration they believed was due. Atlas Mara denied the allegations, arguing that the additional payments Mahtani sought depended on conditions that had not been satisfied. Its lawyers characterised the claim as an attempt to reopen or renegotiate the transaction.
On February 7, 2024, the High Court dismissed the claim. The judge concluded that the claimants had failed to prove they had suffered the losses alleged, describing the case as unsustainable. The ruling was a significant setback for Mahtani’s attempt to recover additional money from the transaction. His side indicated that it intended to appeal.
The Finance Bank sale must also be distinguished from a separate dispute involving Finance Bank of Malawi, a different institution. That bank’s licence was revoked in 2005 after the Reserve Bank of Malawi suspended its foreign-currency operations. The regulator and the government defended their actions, while the bank challenged the legality of the suspension and licence revocation and sought damages.
In a major development on February 3, 2026, Malawi’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the suspension and revocation had been carried out unlawfully because they did not satisfy constitutional requirements for lawful and procedurally fair administrative action. The court allowed the bank’s counterclaim on liability and ordered that damages be assessed by the Assistant Registrar. It also awarded costs to the bank.
The decision was an important legal victory for the bank, but it did not itself award the entire amount being discussed publicly. A May 2026 profile reported a damages claim of approximately $551.9 million plus accrued interest. That figure should be understood as a reported claim, not a final damages award. The court’s February judgment established liability and left the amount to be assessed. The Malawi Judiciary subsequently issued a clarification on February 13, 2026, urging the public to understand the ruling through the judgment itself rather than commentary surrounding the case.
There is another relevant element to the public record: Mahtani’s legal representatives have actively challenged reporting they considered defamatory. A letter dated March 13, 2018, from the US law firm Clare Locke, uploaded for this review, demanded that OffshoreAlert remove material concerning Mahtani, including allegations about suspected money laundering. The letter stated that ZambiaReports had removed substantially similar articles following a settlement and quoted a December 22, 2017, statement from its publisher, James T. Kimer. That statement expressly said the settlement involved no admission of liability and expressed regret if posts were interpreted as making false or inaccurate claims or caused harm. The letter documents Mahtani’s position and the removal demand; it is not, by itself, a judicial finding that every disputed allegation was false.
A separate document supplied with this investigation records a 2012 US judicial-assistance application seeking evidence from Erika Droste and Comerica Bank for a Zambian criminal investigation into Finance Bank shareholders, including Finsbury Investments Limited and Mahtani, concerning suspected money laundering. The document establishes that such an application existed; it does not establish that the suspicion was proven, that charges resulted from that particular investigation, or that Mahtani was convicted of money laundering.
These cases reveal a businessman whose career has been shaped as much by litigation as by banking and industrial ownership. They also demonstrate why a responsible account must resist collapsing separate disputes into a single narrative of guilt or vindication. The London judgment rejected Mahtani’s claim for additional sale proceeds; the Zambian Supreme Court rejected procedural objections that sought to block a criminal appeal; and the Malawian Supreme Court of Appeal found that regulatory action against Finance Bank of Malawi had been unlawful. Each ruling concerns different parties, facts and legal questions.
The broader issue is accountability in major financial and corporate disputes. Investors, employees, creditors and the public need clear information about who owns an asset, whether contractual payments were made, how regulators exercise their powers and what courts have actually decided. Mahtani’s story is not simply one of a tycoon who won or lost. It is a reminder that business reputation cannot substitute for evidence, allegations cannot substitute for verdicts, and a court victory in one dispute does not erase the findings or unanswered questions in another. The public record deserves scrutiny precisely because the stakes involve corporate control, banking regulation and potentially substantial sums of money.
————-
Disclaimer:
Some content on Reportingscams.com is published under our guest post program and is provided by third-party contributors. Reporting scams does not create, verify, or take responsibility for the views, accuracy, or claims expressed in such content.
