The Miami Herald profiled former Ambassador V. Manuel Rocha in 2003, when he joined Steel Hector & Davis to help open the door to Latin America.
Raul Rubiera | Miami Herald | Getty Images
When Carolyn Lamb saw the arrest of Cuban spy Victor Manuel Rocha on the news last December, she immediately recognized him . This is the same person who was sitting in her Omaha living room 17 years ago trying to seal a deal.
Rocha, 73, died Friday. Sentenced to 15 years in prison Jailed for serving as a foreign agent on behalf of the Cuban government, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy. In addition to serving time in prison, Rocha faces three years of supervised release, a $500,000 fine and several other conditions.
Rocha’s arrest last year shocked diplomatic communityPart of the reason is his long tenure as a special agent — more than 40 years, much of that time at the U.S. State Department, including as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia and a member of the National Security Council.
In exchange for a reduced sentence, Rocha’s deal required him to cooperate with prosecutors and expose his covert activities for Cuba.
Carolyn Lamb hopes the process will reveal what Rocha has been doing in her living room for nearly 20 years.
Claims
Lamb described how Rocha traveled across the country in 2007 and offered to buy paper titles to an 80-acre farm, a 1959 Buick and the Cuban telephone company Lamb’s father belonged to before it was confiscated by Castro of thousands of shares.
The former Coca-Cola building in Havana, ironically painted in the company’s colors. The building is now the headquarters of the state-owned “Havana Beverage Company”.
Justin Solomon | CNBC
Castro not only nationalized American property; He confiscated all private property. Every house and business became government property, with the owners receiving nothing. With few exceptions, this remains true today.
In 1970, the U.S. government valued Lamb’s claim at $489,208 and set an annual interest rate of 6% from the date of loss to the date of settlement. According to this formula, Cubans owe $1.9 million today. If left unaddressed, this number will grow larger every day.
“They told me my story was nonsense,” Lamb said of Rocha and one of his business associates who were in Omaha that day. They awarded her $114,000 in damages. Lamb said she was humiliated and suspicious of such a low-ball offer.
The United States owns nearly 6,000 properties and land in Cuba, all of which were confiscated by Fidel Castro’s government after the 1959 coup.this Claims total more than $7 billionmany of which are held by major U.S. brands such as Pepsi-Cola, General Electric and Twentieth Century Fox.
Formerly a Woolworth’s store, it is now used as a “10 Cent Store”, the American equivalent of a dollar store.
Justin Solomon | CNBC
The massive confiscation of American property was one of the main reasons for the U.S. embargo against Cuba more than 60 years ago.
Claims on these properties must be resolved before the embargo can be lifted.
“This remains one of the biggest obstacles to normalizing relations with Cuba,” said Jason Poblet, Lamb’s attorney.
“Is (Rocha) involved in a scheme to help devalue these claims and provide immunity for the Cuban government?” Poblete wondered aloud.
The lower the value of the claim, the less the Cuban government will have to pay in a future negotiated settlement.
Poblete also wonders if Rocha is blocking the process. “Is he making it more difficult to resolve claims?” he told CNBC.
John Kavulich, chairman of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said getting information from Rocha would be helpful to the Cubans because “any intelligence you can get will be useful” in negotiations over the claims.
The former Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Havana now serves as a computer center for Cubans to use the Internet.
Justin Solomon | CNBC
But if Rocha’s involvement in the claims-buying business was indeed part of his covert work, it would be news to his business partners.
Timothy Ashby said he was “surprised” by Rocha’s arrest because “he was almost too right-wing to be true” and Ashby could not imagine Rocha fighting for communism Government Work.
But looking back, Ashby said there were signs. “He had a problem with rich people.”
That’s not all. Ashby told CNBC in a recent interview: “He had his office clear the bugs once a week because he said he was worried the FBI would listen to them.”
Ashby believes Rocha’s paranoia about wiretapping was a response to the George W. Bush administration’s opposition to Cuba’s claims to buy the business.
But by then, Rocha was entering his third decade as a Cuban agent, according to the Justice Department.
Ashby said it was his idea to acquire the claims and that he hired Rocha because of his ties to the U.S. government.
The company they formed eventually raised $10.5 million and purchased nine titles, including tracts of land and a handful of hotels. But Ashby said they were forced to halt the operation when the Bush administration concluded their activities violated the embargo.
Timothy Ashby now writes spy novels. Little did he know he would become a character in real life.
Hidden profession
Rocha was born in Colombia in 1950, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1978, and became a State Department employee in 1981.
In the mid-1990s, he spent a year on the National Security Council, with special responsibility for Cuba, and later served in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. The Justice Department said he had unique access to nonpublic U.S. government information throughout his career.
In 2022 and 2023, Rocha was arrested after an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban spy used a camera to record three separate meetings Rocha held in Miami.
According to the Justice Department complaint, Rocha acted like a Cuban agent throughout the meeting, consistently referring to the United States as the “enemy” and using the word “we” to describe himself and Cuba.
“What we did… was huge… not just the Grand Slams,” he boasted at one point.
The recordings show that Rocha was recruited by Cubans in Chile in the 1970s and may have become a State Department employee, clearly becoming a covert agent.
In the FBI recording, he said his famous right-wing image was part of his cover.
File photo: Former US Ambassador to Bolivia Manuel Rocha (Manuel Rocha) is interviewed by the media on July 11, 2001.
Gonzalo Espinosa | AFP | Getty Images
After retiring from the State Department in 2006, Rocha became an adviser to U.S. Southern Command, the U.S. military’s joint command whose area of responsibility includes Cuba.
It was at this time that he entered the claims business.
Poblete hopes Rocha’s briefings to U.S. officials will reveal more about the information he provided to Cuba about the claims, the claims process and whether he manipulated the settlement process to thwart the claims.
Lamb said she and small claims holders feel forgotten.
“We don’t belong to a big voting bloc, and we don’t have the deep pockets to pay lobbyists to represent us.”
Poblet said his client may indeed sue Rocha. “We will use every tool available to assist Americans whose property has been seized.”
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