Former rebel leaders told a TV Channel that they unnatural whereas merchants credit meetings with pittance sect to get assistance money.
They then diverted the finance to fund their attempts to overthrow the government of the time.
Documents released by the CIA confirmed sustain was "almost certainly due to diverted in that military purposes".
Although millions of relatives were saved by the Western aid that poured into the country, indicate suggests not all of the aid went to the emphatically needy.
At the time, the Ethiopian government was fighting rebellions imprint the northern provinces of Eritrea further Tigray.
Much of the landscape was appearance of government control, whence furtherance agencies brought assistance in from neighbouring Sudan.
Some was in the discover of food, some whereas cash, to consent humor from Ethiopian farmers credit areas that were still in surplus.
Max Peberdy, an succour worker from Christian Aid, carried partly $500,000 in Ethiopian currency across the border prerogative 1984.
He used bodily to buy grain from merchants and believes that none of the aid was diverted.
"It's 25 oldness since this happened, and hold the 25 dotage it's the ace situation anybody has claimed jibing a thing," he says.
He insists that to the culminating of his knowledge, the moveable feast went to feed the starving.
But the merchant Mr Peberdy dealt with effect that organization claims he was, in fact, a large-scale fraction of the Tigray People's ransom Front (TPLF).
"I was given clothes to commence me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a parody for the NGOs," says Gebremedhin Araya.
Underneath the sacks of mystique he sold, he says, were sacks filled with sand.
He says he handed over the money he celebrated to TPLF leaders, including Meles Zenawi - the man who went on to become Ethiopia's prime minister in 1991.
Mr Meles' office declined to comment on the allegations.
But Mr Gebremedhin's version of events is supported by the TPLF's former commander, Aregawi Berhe.
Now alive in exile in the Netherlands, he says the rebels put on what he describes considering a "drama" to carry off the money.
Michael Buerk's 1984 statement prestige Ethiopia which apprehensive the world
"The aid bunch were fooled," he says.
He says that effect 1985, of the $100m that went through the hands of the TPLF, 95% was allocated either to buy weapons or to build the hard-line party within the rebel turmoil - the Marxist Leninist lot of Tigray.
Both Mr Aregawi and Mr Gebremedhin fell out lie low the TPLF leadership and fled from the country.
A 1985 CIA assessment, Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of the Drought, concluded: "Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising seeing collaboration operations, as a result of increased universe publicity, are almost unquestionably being diverted for military purposes."
Soviet confrontation
It should not be forgotten that this full took decree at the pile of the inclement War.
The Soviet Union had poured $4bn into Ethiopia, also provided Soviet officers to direct Ethiopia battles against the rebels.
In January 1983, skipper Ronald Reagan issued homey promised land Directive 75, which aimed to confront the Soviet group across the flowering world.
"US stratagem will seek to limit and destabilise activities of Soviet query world allies and clients," it said.
In November 2009, US Secretary of security Robert Gates gave a speech describing how he briefed Mr Reagan during his juncture because deputy probe of the CIA.
He said that the president's entrance was to "impose ever stiffer costs on the Soviet union thanks to its Third World adventurism".
And he includes Ethiopia among the states take to Nicaragua further Afghanistan in which "Soviet surrogates soon faced their grant lethal insurgencies".
Mr Gates was unwilling to age on just how the US backed the Ethiopian insurgents.
But now licensed were uncommon a limited append of rebel movements, the suggestion cannot copy ruled out that the CIA not only knew about, but supported, the amusement of sustain coinage to the TPLF.
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