Prince Harry has stepped down from a charity he founded 19 years ago after an "unthinkable" controversy. The Duke of Sussex and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho co-founded Sentebale, a charity dedicating itself to helping African orphans and tackling poverty and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana, in 2006.

It was founded in honour of his late mother, Princess Diana. Harry said he was "in shock" and "truly heartbroken" in a joint statement with Prince Seeiso on Tuesday evening. The statement read: "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.

"We thank all the trustees for their service over the years and are truly heartbroken they've had to follow through with this act.

"What's transpired is unthinkable. We are in shock that we have to do this, but we have a continued responsibility to Sentebale's beneficiaries, so we will be sharing all of our concerns with the Charity Commission as to how this came about."

The princes added: "Although we may no longer be patrons, we will always be its founders, and we will never forget what this charity is capable of achieving when it is in the right care."

Former trustees Timothy Boucher, Mark Dyer, Audrey Kgosidintsi, Kelello Lerotholi and Damian West said in a statement: "As a group of British and African trustees, we have made the difficult decision to unanimously resign as board members of Sentebale.

"We are deeply proud to have supported the visionary work of the founding patrons Prince Seeiso and Prince Harry, who founded Sentebale in memory of their mothers. For two decades, Sentebale has championed hundreds of thousands of children and young people, providing them with care, training and life skills, which not only benefit each individual child they support but their families and their communities as a whole.

"Today’s decision is nothing short of devastating for all of us, but we see no other path forward as the result of our loss in trust and confidence in the chair of the board."

According to The Times, the charity is now the subject of a Charity Commission investigation.

A spokesman for Sentebale said that Sentebale had carried out a "restructuring" of its board as "confirmation of its strategy to redeploy senior roles to be proximate to most of the team and programmes in southern Africa".

They said: "We can confirm that we are aware of concerns about the governance of Sentebale. We are assessing the issues to determine the appropriate regulatory steps."