Former envoy who spied for Cuba sentenced to 15 years
A former US ambassador who pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba for more than four decades has been sentenced in a federal court to 15 years in prison.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in December for what US officials called “one of the highest reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent”.
Rocha pleaded not guilty in February to charges of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government but later accepted a plea deal with federal prosecutors.
Judge Beth Bloom, after a 3½ hour hearing in Miami, told Rocha she would give him “the maximum penalty permitted by law”.
In addition to the 15-year sentence, Rocha was given a US$500,000 fine.
Rocha, a naturalised US citizen originally from Colombia, allegedly began aiding Havana as a covert agent of Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence in 1981, and his espionage activities continued until his arrest, according to US authorities.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, announcing Rocha’s arrest in December, said he had “repeatedly referred to the United States as ‘the enemy’” and “repeatedly bragged about the significance of his efforts”.
Rocha joined the State Department in 1981 and rose through the ranks as a career diplomat, serving in posts in Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Washington.
Rocha served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 in the administration of president Bill Clinton, and was the ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 under Clinton and George W. Bush.
The criminal complaint against Rocha details how, over multiple meetings with an undercover FBI agent beginning in November 2022, he “behaved as a Cuban agent”, praising the island’s late leader Fidel Castro and “using the term ‘we’ to describe himself and Cuba”.
“Despite swearing an oath to defend the constitution of the United States, Rocha betrayed the US by secretly working as a Cuban agent for decades,” said Larissa Knapp of the FBI’s National Security Branch.