Dr Sophie Chandauka, who has accused Prince Harry of ‘harassment and bullying at scale’, also said Meghan Markle caused an awkward moment when she turned up with a celebrity friend
The chair of Prince Harry’s charity who accused him of “harassment and bullying at scale” has also shed light on an awkward viral moment with Meghan Markle. Dr Sophie Chandauka, chair of the charity Sentebale, accused him of allowing his Netflix show to wreck a key fundraising event and that Meghan caused a stir when she turned up with Tennis icon Serena Williams.
Dr Chandauka described Harry as a big risk to the charity – which was founded in memory of his mum Princess Diana – and claimed he authorised the release of damaging news about her. Describing the fundraising polo event in Miami last year, Dr Chandauka said: “We had a very generous family that was happy for us to use their polo grounds at a material discount. And then, about a month before the event was about to take place, Prince Harry called the team and said: ‘I’m doing a Netflix show, and I would love to bring a camera crew.”
Dr Chandauka pointed out that no one involved in the fundraiser had agreed to appear on a TV show. Another problem was that the venue owners now saw the event as a commercial undertaking and named a high price, she said.
Dr Chandauka added: “We couldn’t afford it … so now we lost the venue.” Another venue was found but more chaos ensued when Harry’s wife Meghan, 43, decided at the last minute to turn up and brought 23-time grand slam tennis champion Ms Williams.”
Dr Chandauka said: “We would have been really excited had we known ahead of time… but we didn’t. The choreography went badly on stage because we had too many people on stage.” On Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, the presenter asked Dr Chandauka whether Harry was the “No1 risk” to the charity. She said: “Yes”.
At another Senteale event just a few months prior, Harry’s wife Meghan joined in a show of support. The couple attended an annual Sentable charity polo match in Miami, Florida, last April, where the duke captained the winning team.
Footage from the match appeared to show Meghan asking Dr Chandauka not to pose next to Harry as he celebrated his win. The Duchess could be seen instructing people on stage after handing her husband a trophy. And Dr Chandauka, who stood on Harry’s right, was asked twice by Meghan to move to her left side away from her husband, as he kept his arm tightly around the Duchess.
Appointed in 2023, Dr Chandauka said she immediately looked at the charity’s records and found sponsors had begun to desert it at the time Prince Harry was pulling away from the Royal Family and leaving the UK. She said: “We had lost quite a number of corporate sponsors. We’d lost some families, and we’d lost individuals who were donating.” She also claimed the prince’s team asked her to defend Meghan from negative publicity. I said no, we’re not setting a precedent by which we become an extension of the Sussex PR machine,” she said.
After Dr Chandauka refused the board’s request to step down as chair, amid complaints about her leadership, both princes resigned as trustees. Zimbabwean lawyer Dr Chandauka, 47, said her experience of meeting Harry, 40, in person was “fantastic”.
But she added: “Really, what Prince Harry wanted to do was to eject me from the organisation. It went on for months through bullying, harassment.” In response, Sir Trevor pressed: “What you’re essentially saying is that the Duke of Sussex is guilty of harassment and bullying and improper conduct in the governance of the charity?”
Dr Chandauka replied that Harry’s release of a “damaging piece of news to the outside world” amounted to an attack on her and was “an example of harassment and bullying at scale”. Asked about reports trustees had lost confidence in her leadership and whether she was “the problem”, rather than Harry, Dr Chandauka said: “It was me who was ‘the problem’ because I put in a whistleblower complaint about the bullying, the harassment and the misogyny.” (She had also hinted at being treated differently from her male predecessor because of being a woman.) She then claimed: “Prince Harry interfered in the investigation of that.
“And the senior independent director, who should have taken care of it, was the very same person who then delivered the news to me that I was going to be removed by the board. So it’s a cover-up, and the prince is involved.” She added that Sentebale itself, now a mature charity at 19 years old, was not in danger of failing, adding: “Sentebale will live on because of the people.”
A source close to the trustees and patrons described Ms Chandauka’s interviews as a “publicity stunt”.
Harry founded Sentebale in 2006 alongside his friend Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, to help young people in the country diagnosed with HIV. The Duke of Sussex did not respond to a request for comment.
