Prince Harry is getting sued by the charity he co-founded.
Sentebale, the charity for young people in southern Africa he started in memory of his mother, Diana, has filed a defamation case against the prince in London’s high court.
At issue? The reputational damage it claims Prince Harry caused by taking his dispute with the charity’s chair public last year.
As a refresher: In 2025, Harry and his co-founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, announced they were stepping down as patrons of the charity after their relationship with its chair, Sophie Chandauka, had “broken down beyond repair.”
This happened after Chandauka said the board of trustees asked her to step down when she blew the whistle on alleged “poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir” at the charity.
The charity’s lawsuit for “libel and slander” appears to centre on the very public breakup between Prince Harry and Sentebale that came after. As a result of Chandauka’s allegations, the U.K. watchdog that oversees charities launched an investigation into Sentebale.
While this investigation found no evidence of what Chandauka alleged, its report did criticize both parties for letting the internal conflict play out so publicly, warning that their dispute had “severely impacted the charity’s reputation and risked undermining public trust in charities more generally.”
After this finding was released, a spokesperson for Harry said that the report fell “troublingly short in many regards, primarily the fact that the consequences of the current chair’s actions will not be borne by her – but by the children who rely on Sentebale’s support.”
Which brings us to the lawsuit, lodged in court on March 24. A spokesperson told the BBC that its defamation claim was over an alleged “adverse media campaign” that Prince Harry, alongside his co-defendant and former Sentebale board trustee Mark Dyer, led via “co-ordinated media attacks” that they claim caused reputational damage and undermined the charity’s work.
The Guardian quotes a statement from Sentebale that calls Harry and Dyer, “the architects of that adverse media campaign, which has had significant viral impact and triggered an onslaught of cyberbullying directed at the charity and its leadership.”
The charity also claims it is the victim of “false media narratives” that have diverted leadership’s attention to a “reputational crisis not of their own making.”
It adds that this lawsuit was launched to protect the charity from further reputational harm, and that the lawsuit is being funded with “external” funding and not the charity’s own funds.
Prince Harry has not publicly commented on this yet.
