And former American diplomat was arrested this Friday in Florida, after a long FBI counterintelligence investigation, accused of secretly serve as an agent of the Cuban governmentas reported by the agency The Associated Press.
Manuel Rocha73, who served as the United States ambassador to Bolivia, was arrested in Miami on a criminal complaint.
For this Monday, more details about the case are expected to emerge in a court appearancetwo sources told APwho requested anonymity because they were not authorized to refer to an ongoing federal investigation.
According to one of the sources, the Justice Department accuses Rocha of working to promote the interests of the Cuban government.
The note reminds that US federal law requires people who carry out political orders from a foreign government or entity within the country to register with the Department of Justicewhich has intensified criminal condemnation of illicit foreign lobbying in recent years.
The Justice Department declined to comment to the news agency; while Rocha’s wife, Karla Wittkop Rochatold one of her journalists when he contacted her: “I don’t need to talk to you” and hung up the phone.
Rocha, with 25 years of diplomatic career under both Democratic and Republican administrationsspent a long time in Latin American countries during the Cold War.
In Cuba, he remained for a period in the US Interests Section.when this country did not have diplomatic relations with the communist regime of Fidel Castro.
He was the top American diplomat in Argentina between 1997 and 2000, “when a decade-long monetary stabilization program backed by Washington crumbled under the weight of massive foreign debt and stagnant growth, triggering a political crisis that would see the South American country go through five presidents.” in two weeks,” he said. AP.
His next diplomatic mission took him to Boliviaas ambassador, where intervened directly in the 2002 presidential electionswarning weeks before the vote that the United States would cut off aid to the South American country if the former coca grower was elected Evo Morales.
“I want to remind the Bolivian electorate that if they vote for those who want Bolivia to export cocaine again, that will seriously jeopardize any future aid to Bolivia from the United States,” Rocha said in a speech that was interpreted as an attempt to maintain American dominance in the region, recalled AP.
In his beginnings as a diplomat, he served in Italy, Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and from 1994 to 1995 he was director for Inter-American Affairs of the White House before the National Security Council. He was also a member of the International Council on Terrorism led by Henry Kissinger.
Born in Colombia, Rocha grew up in a working-class home in New York City and earned several liberal arts degrees at Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown before joining the Foreign Service in 1981.
After retiring from the State Department, He embarked on a second career in the business world.being president of a gold mine in the Dominican Republic, between 2012 and 2017.
Most recently, he held senior positions at XCoal, a Pennsylvania-based coal exporter; Clover Leaf Capital, a company formed to facilitate mergers in the cannabis industry; the law firm Foley & Lardner -until August of this year- and the Spanish public relations firms Llorente & Cuenca.
