When I heard about Richemont's links to the Apartheid Regime, I did a bit of digging into the history fo the company. Lots of this informations here is from French articles and pages:
Back in 1941, Anton Rupert, Johann's father, founded a tobacco company, Voorbrand, that became Rembrandt as they eventually expanded into vine, spirits, food, mining and banking. In 1954, Rembrandt took a majority stake in Rothmans, a defunct tobacco company, which acquired Carreras, another defunct tobacco company, in 1958 and Dunhill in 1967. Dunhill would later acquire Montblanc in 1977 and Chloe in 1985.
Rupert's introduction to luxury came when, in 1968, Robert Hocq, the founder of silver match, bought a Cartier licence in order to produce a gold cigarette lighter. Seeing the potential in Cartier, Hocq started looking for investors to buy the three Cartier companies in Paris, London and New York. One of those investors was Anton Rupert, who offered to buy 20% of Cartier America in exchange for a cigarette licence. When Hocq died in 1979, Rupert takes a majority stake in the now unified Cartier. In 1988, Cartier acquired two Swiss watchmaking houses, Piaget and Baume & Mercier.
Despite Rupert's anti-Apartheid views, Rembrandt risks facing boycotts in the face of mass nationalisation towards the end of the regime.In 1988, Johann proposes to split the company into two entities. The first would later become an South-African investement company called Remgro Limited. The second, using Rupert's shares in Cartier, Rothmans and their subsidaries, became a Swiss holding company called Richemont. In 1999, Rothmans International is sold off in the midst of several hard luxury acquisitions.
