Prince Harry has been accused of “harassment and bullying at scale” in an escalating dispute over a charity he co-founded to help young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana.

Harry, the younger son of the King, co-founded Sentebale in 2006 in honour of his late mother Princess Diana.

Last week, he and fellow co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho quit following a dispute with chair Sophie Chandauka – a move two princes said had “devastated” them.

The charity’s entire board of trustees has also quit.

But Chandauka, a Zimbabwean corporate finance lawyer, has hit back, criticising the Duke of Sussex’s resignation.

“At some point on Tuesday, Prince Harry authorised the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors, or my executive director,” she told Sky News UK on Sunday (local time).

“Can you imagine what that attack has done for me, on me and the 540 individuals in the Sentebale organisations and their family?

“That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”

Representatives for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

Sky News said the couple declined to offer any formal response to the interview.

Last wee, Harry and Seeiso said in a joint statement that it was “devastating” that the relationship between Sentebale’s trustees and Chandauka had broken beyond repair.

Chandauka has previously said Sentebale was beset by “poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny [and] misogynoir (bullying of black women)”.

In an interview with Britain’s Financial Times published on Saturday, she said she was asked by Harry’s team to protect Meghan Markle after negative media coverage, which she refused to do.

Chandauka told Sky News there was a dispute about a polo match for the charity in Miami last year. Sentebale lost its initial venue because Harry wanted to bring a Netflix film crew to the event.

“We had a very generous family that was happy for us to use their polo grounds at a material discount,” Chandauka said.

“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 so that I can shoot some footage in this show’.”

But she said that meant consent was needed from the polo ground’s owners, as well as sponsors and guests. Because of Netflix’s involvement, the event was subsequently treated as a commercial venture, meaning Sentebale could no longer afford the venue.

Chandauka said they were “lucky enough” to find another location.

But on the day of the polo match, there were more issues when Meghan made a last minute appearance, bringing retired tennis legend Serena Williams.

“The duchess decided to attend, but she told us she wasn’t attending, and she brought a friend, a very famous friend,” Chandauka told Sky News.

“We would have been really excited had we known ahead of time, but we didn’t. And so, the choreography went badly on stage because we had too many people on stage.”

Footage of the uncomfortable scenes on stage, with Meghan repeatedly asking Chandauka to swap positions, went viral in the days after.

“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,” Chandauka said.

She said Harry later asked her to issue a public statement in support of his wife.

“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, No.1,” she said.

“And No.2, because we cannot be an extension of the Sussexes.”

A source close to the former trustees of the Sentebale charity has reportedly told Sky News that Chandauka’s account of the polo match was “highly misleading”.

Chandauka has also said that the way Sentebale was run “was no longer appropriate in 2023 in a post-Black Lives Matter world … funders were asking for locally-led initiatives”.

-with AAP