U.S. Ambassador Sentenced for Cuba Spying

A former US ambassador who pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba for over four decades was sentenced in 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 three-and-a-half 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 $500,000 fine.

Rocha, a naturalized 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.

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.

He also served as an advisor to the US military command responsible for Cuba.

"This afternoon Victor Manuel Rocha, former US ambassador, 20-year State Department employee pleaded guilty to two counts of acting covertly as an agent of a foreign government and conspiring to defraud the government of the United States," said David Newman, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice.

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 communist-ruled island's late leader Fidel Castro and using the term we to describe himself and Cuba.