A former US ambassador to Bolivia has been charged with secretly performing as a Cuban agent for “more than 40 years”.
Manuel Rocha, who was arrested at his Miami dwelling on Friday, served as the highest US diplomat to Bolivia between 2000 and 2002.
Prosecutors from the US Justice Department accuse him of selling the Cuban authorities’s pursuits, Sky’s US companion NBC News reported.
This shouldn’t be a criminal offense until it’s completed on US soil with out registering with the division as a international lobbyist, the broadcaster added.
Rocha, 73, appeared in courtroom on Monday and is alleged to have begun his “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf in 1981 or earlier.
It was one of many highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the US authorities by a international agent, division officers mentioned.
He met Cuban intelligence operators, lied to US authorities officers about his travels and contacts and used a passport obtained by means of a false assertion, prosecutors claimed in courtroom paperwork filed in Florida.
The costs replicate a harsher strategy by the division in the direction of the prosecution of illicit international lobbying.
Bolivian President Hugo Banzer (L) with Manuel Rocha in 2000
During his 25-year profession as a US diplomat, Rocha served as ambassador to Bolivia and held one other senior publish – head of mission – in Argentina.
He labored for the US Interests Section in Havana within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, a time when the US lacked full diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro’s communist authorities.
Prosecutors declare Cuba’s notoriously refined intelligence providers first started utilizing Rocha in 1981 when he first joined the US State Department.
They added that the alleged hyperlinks continued properly after he left authorities service greater than twenty years later.
The FBI realized concerning the relationship final 12 months, it’s alleged, and organized a collection of undercover conferences with an agent posing as a Cuban intelligence operator.
In one encounter in Miami final 12 months, Rocha is alleged to have mentioned: “I always told myself, ‘The only thing that can put everything we have done in danger is – is … someone’s betrayal, someone who may have met me, someone who may have known something at some point’.”
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Born in Colombia, Rocha joined the US international service in 1981.
As ambassador to Bolivia, he warned Bolivians that in the event that they voted for Evo Morales within the upcoming election, the US would lower off assist to the poor South American nation.
Rocha additionally served in Italy, Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and labored as a Latin America professional for the US National Security Council.
Content Source: information.sky.com