Former ambassador sentenced to 15 years in prison for decades-long spying of US government for Cuba

The former US ambassador to Bolivia was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Friday after admitting to a decades-long campaign of spying on the US government for communist Cuba.  

Miami-based US District Judge Beth Bloom accepted Victor Manuel Rocha’s guilty plea on two counts, including acting as an agent of a foreign government, before handing down his decade-and-a-half-long sentence and a $500,000 fine, the maximum penalty allowed.

Rocha, 73, was indicted last December, in a case that Attorney General Merrick Garland described as “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the US government by a foreign agent.” 

“Today’s plea and sentencing brings to an end more than four decades of betrayal and deceit by the defendant,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said Friday.

“Rocha admitted to acting as an agent of the Cuban government at the same time he held numerous positions of trust in the U.S. government, a staggering betrayal of the American people and an acknowledgement that every oath he took to the United States was a lie,” the Justice Department official added. 

Rocha, who served as ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, held high-ranking posts in several embassies and even the White House during the Clinton administration over his more than 20 years in public service. 

Between 2006 and 2012, after leaving the State Department, Rocha served as an advisor to the US Southern Command, a Miami-based joint military command post of the Department of Defense whose area of responsibility includes Cuba.

The DOJ noted that his various high-level roles provided him access to nonpublic and classified information “and the ability to affect US foreign policy.” 

Rocha admitted that his involvement with Cuba’s intelligence service began in 1973 and continued until the time of his arrest – spanning his entire career in government. 

The Colombian-born career diplomat portrayed himself as a Cuba hardliner, opposed to the communist regime, in an effort to keep suspicions to a minimum, according to prosecutors. 

He was arrested after a series of meetings with undercover FBI agents posing as Cuban intelligence officials, during which Rocha acknowledged the “decades” of spying he had done on behalf of Cuba, spanning “40 years.” 

Rocha referred to the US as “the enemy” and praised the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro during his meetings with the undercover FBI agents, according to the DOJ. 

He also described his work as a Cuban agent as “enormous … More than a grand slam,” and asserted that what he did “strengthened the Revolution … immensely.”

The US government has not revealed what information Rocha might have provided Cuba or how he may have influenced US policy toward the island.

“15 years in a federal prison will never be enough for the irreparable harm he’s inflicted on our nation,” Cuban-born Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) wrote on X. 

The Justice Department did not charge Rocha with espionage, a crime that would’ve carried a stiffer sentence.