Top Relief Aide Defected to West, Ethiopia Says

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — This Marxist-led nation said Tuesday that its top famine relief official has defected to the West, and it accused him of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in donated relief funds.

In Washington, a U.S. official familiar with Ethiopia confirmed that Dawit Wolde Giorgis has been in the United States for the last three months and is seeking permanent residence as a political refugee.

“Normally, defectors are just jumping into the lap of somebody else’s intelligence system. That’s not the case with Dawit--I think he is a genuine refugee and he wants to be able to go home again some day (after a change of government),” said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

Missing for Months

Dawit, who headed Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, failed to return home from an official visit abroad several months ago.

In December, he was reported to be seeking asylum in the United States, but both the State Department and the Ethiopian Embassy at that time denied the report.

In its statment Tuesday, the Ethiopian government said that hundreds of thousands of dollars in worldwide contributions, earmarked to aid millions of starving Ethiopians, was diverted from bank accounts in the United States and Europe into which relief funds were deposited.

The government said it has evidence of the means used by Dawit and “relatives and other accomplices” to embezzle the relief funds. It said bank accounts were opened in New York and London, specifically to receive aid funds.

Ethiopia appealed to people and governments around the world to help it bring to justice “this urgently wanted criminal.”

Dawit, a former major in the Ethiopian armed forces, is a law graduate of Addis Ababa University.

He supported the group of young officers who led the revolution that overthrew the late Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.

He then rose through the ranks of the revolutionary government to the influential position of administrator of Eritrea, the former Italian-ruled province where regional insurgents have been fighting a secessionist war against control from Addis Ababa. He was later appointed to head the famine-relief operation in Ethiopia.