A woman who says she was bullied and harassed by Prince Harry has called him the “number one risk” to the charity they ran together and accused him of briefing against it in an attempt to force it to fail.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sky News’ Trevor Phillips, chair of Sentebale Dr Sophie Chandauka claimed:
• Sentebale lost sponsors and donors when the Sussexes left the UK – but she wasn’t allowed to discuss the problem
• Harry tried to “eject” her from the organisation
• She was asked for a statement in support of Meghan after a polo fundraiser – which she refused to give
• The prince would appoint board members without consulting her
Sentebale was set up by the prince in 2006 in memory of his mother, Princess Diana, to help young people with HIV in Lesotho and Botswana.
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Dr Chandauka has already accused the prince of “harassment and bullying at scale” by “unleashing” the Sussex PR machine over issues at the charity – an allegation a source denied as “completely baseless”
In a full interview for Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, she was asked if the Duke of Sussex is the “number one risk” to the charity, and replied “yes”.
Dr Chandauka said when she asked why the loss of sponsors wasn’t talked about in the charity, she was told: “It’s an uncomfortable conversation to have with Prince Harry in the room.”
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“What you discovered was essentially, donors were walking because of the prince’s reputation?” asked Trevor Phillips.
“Yes,” Dr Chandauka replied.
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She also accused the prince of trying to “eject” her from the organisation.
“There were board meetings where members of the executive team and external strategic advisors were sending me messages saying, ‘Should I interrupt?’, ‘Should I stop this?’ ‘Oh my gosh, this is so bad’,” she said.
“In fact, our strategic adviser for fundraising then sent me a message saying she wouldn’t want to ever attend any more board meetings or bring her colleagues because of the treatment.”
When she didn’t leave, Dr Chandauka suggested Prince Harry tried to force the failure of the charity he set up in his mother’s memory.
“Prince Harry started to brief, and his team, sponsors that I had been speaking to, against me and the charity, because that is a sure way of getting me out if it’s seen as though I’m not being successful in my fundraising efforts,” she said.
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When asked about a Sky News interview with former trustee Dr Kelello Lerotholi who said he was “surprised” by her accusations about the prince, Dr Chandauka said she wasn’t “surprised that he didn’t know much of what was going on in the organisation”.
“He had the worst attendance record and even when he was in the meetings, he didn’t actually contribute that much,” she said.
Dr Chandauka gave an example of the prince’s behaviour in board meetings.
“Prince Harry decides, on this specific occasion, that he wants to appoint an individual to the board, with immediate effect, without having talked to me,” she said.
“His proxy on the board says, ‘Yes, I second that motion’. The third proxy on the board says, ‘Welcome to the board, Brian’.
“And everybody’s shocked and quiet, but this is what happens when the prince is in the room and no one has the courage to speak.”
Polo event
Dr Chandauka also discussed Prince Harry’s filming of a Netflix show, which she said resulted in the charity losing the venue for an event they were holding.
She said the duke phoned her team, saying he’d like to bring a Netflix crew to the polo event.
She said the venue owners were originally “happy for us to use their polo grounds at a material discount”.
But as a result of the request, the price increased as it had become a commercial venture.
The charity was forced to pull out of the venue as it couldn’t afford the fee, according to Dr Chandauka, but then was “lucky enough” to find another through Prince Harry’s connections.
On the day, however, she claimed there were more problems.
“The duchess decided to attend, but she told us she wasn’t attending, and she brought a friend, a very famous friend,” Dr Chandauka said.
“The choreography went badly on stage because we had too many people on stage.
“The international press captured this, and there was a lot of talk about the duchess and the choreography on stage and whether she should have been there and her treatment of me.”
She claimed the media attention around Meghan’s treatment of her prompted Prince Harry to ask Dr Chandauka to issue a statement in support of the duchess.
“I said I wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t care about the duchess, but because I knew what would happen if I did so, number one. And number two, because we cannot be an extension of the Sussexes,” she said.
Sky News contacted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex about the contents of Sophie Chandauka’s interview with Trevor Phillips, and they declined to offer any formal response.
But a source close to the former trustees of the Sentebale charity has described as categorically false Dr Chandauka’s claims that Dr Kelello did not attend meetings and did not contribute much when he was in meetings and that the Duke of Sussex leaving the UK impacted the charity, caused it to lose sponsors, or that the duke posed the biggest risk to the charity.
The source also described as “completely baseless” Dr Chandauka’s claims that she was bullied and harassed, briefed against by Prince Harry, or that the Sussex machine was unleashed on her and that the people on the board of Sentebale were scared to speak up when the duke was in the room.
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The claim that the press was informed about the royal patrons departure as trustees before the charity, has been described by the source as “categorically untrue”.
The source described Dr Chandauka’s account of the polo match as “highly misleading”. Sky News also contacted Netflix, who declined to comment.
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In response to Dr Chandauka’s claim that the Duke of Sussex was ‘forcing the failure’ of the charity ‘as a last resort’, the source pointed to the public statement of Prince Harry and his co-founder of the Sentebale charity, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, which read:
“It is devastating that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation.
“These trustees acted in the best interest of the charity in asking the chair to step down, while keeping the wellbeing of staff in mind. In turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship.”
