A federal court on Friday sentenced a former US ambassador to 15 years in prison after being convicted of spying for Cuba for more than four decades. Sources said, 73-year-old Victor Manuel Rocha was arrested last December. He is the longest-serving foreign agent working against the United States, US officials said.

Rocha pleaded not guilty in February to charges of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government but later struck a deal with federal prosecutors.

After a three-and-a-half-hour hearing in Miami on Friday, Judge Beth Bloom told Rocha she would give him the “maximum sentence permitted by law.” In addition to the 15-year sentence, Rocha was fined US$500,000.

According to US authorities, Rocha, a US citizen of Colombian descent, began assisting Havana in 1981 as an undercover agent for Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) and continued his espionage activities until his arrest.