An unsightly rift between Prince Harry and a frontrunner of a charity he co-founded escalated on Sunday after the chief, Sophie Chandauka, accused the prince of partaking in harassment and bullying to attempt to pressure her out of her submit.
Ms. Chandauka stated that when Harry abruptly resigned final week because the patron of the charity, Sentebale, it was calculated to break the group after he did not oust her from her submit because the chair of its board of trustees.
“Are you able to think about what that assault has executed for me, on me, and the 540 people within the Sentebale organizations and their household?” Ms. Chandauka stated in an interview with the British broadcaster Sky Information. “That’s an instance of harassment and bullying at scale.”
A spokesman for Harry and his spouse, Meghan, declined to touch upon Ms. Chandauka’s newest claims, which she made on the Sky Information program “Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.”
Sentebale was co-founded by the prince in 2006 to honor his late mom, Diana, Princess of Wales, and to boost cash to assist younger victims of the H.I.V. pandemic in Lesotho. It has expanded operations to close by Botswana and works on points starting from substance abuse and gender-based violence to local weather change, and the way they have an effect on younger individuals.
Harry, who’s also referred to as the Duke of Sussex, introduced his resignation, alongside the charity’s co-founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, final Wednesday, saying that the connection between the board of trustees and Ms. Chandauka had ruptured irretrievably. 5 of the board’s 9 members had resigned earlier within the week.
Their departures adopted a mounting sequence of conflicts between the board and Ms. Chandauka. The 5 board members had requested her to resign, saying they’d misplaced “belief and confidence” in her.
“It’s devastating that the connection between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down past restore, creating an untenable scenario,” Harry and Prince Seeiso stated in a joint assertion once they introduced their resignation. “We’re in shock that now we have to do that, however now we have a continued duty to Sentebale’s beneficiaries.”
The dispute between board members and Ms. Chandauka has landed in an English court docket and with Britain’s Charity Fee, which regulates charities in England and Wales. Each side have filed claims of wrongdoing. Though Sentebale operates in southern Africa, it’s registered in Britain.
Ms. Chandauka, a Zimbabwe-born lawyer who has labored for Morgan Stanley and the expertise firm Meta, was named as Sentebale’s chair in July 2023 and had beforehand served as a trustee from 2009 to 2015.
Among the many examples of mistreatment cited by Ms. Chandauka on Sky was an ungainly incident, caught on video, after a polo match to boost cash for the charity in Miami final April. In the course of the presentation of awards onstage, Meghan appeared to ask Ms. Chandauka to modify locations from her place subsequent to Harry. That required her to duck beneath a trophy as she moved to face subsequent to Meghan, also referred to as the Duchess of Sussex, prompting information organizations to boost questions on Meghan’s conduct.
“Prince Harry requested me to challenge some form of an announcement in assist of the duchess, and I stated I wouldn’t,” Ms. Chandauka stated. “Not as a result of I didn’t care in regards to the duchess, however as a result of I knew what would occur if I did so, No. 1. And No. 2, as a result of we can’t be an extension of the Sussexes.”
Ms. Chandauka stated the location of the polo match had already been moved as a result of Harry insisted on bringing a digital camera crew that was filming a documentary for Netflix, with which the couple has a manufacturing deal.
Ms. Chandauka stated that the drama surrounding the break up between Harry and Meghan and the British royal household had turn into the best threat to the charity. As tensions with Sussexes mounted, she stated, she had been a sufferer of “this unleashing of the Sussex machine,” referring to Harry’s public relations group.
For all her costs, Ms. Chandauka stated her relationship with Harry had typically been “incredible.” However she stated, “There are some people on the board who thought they might get away with mistreating a lady.”
