US expelled Venezuela’s Miami consul over possible cyber-attacks

The US State Department has declared Livia Acosta Noguera, Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, persona non grata and says she must leave the country by Tuesday.

Livia Acosta Noguera is alleged to have discussed possible cyber-attacks on the US while based at the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico in 2008.

The FBI has been investigating the comments, AP news agency says.

The US state department did not comment on the reason for the expulsion.

Four US members of Congress wrote to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December raising concerns about the Venezuelan diplomat.

Their letter says that according to a documentary broadcast on the Spanish-language network Univision last month, Livia Acosta Noguera discussed attacking the US government’s computer systems with diplomats from the Iranian and Cuban embassies and students posing as extremists, while she was vice secretary at Caracas’s embassy in Mexico.

The congressmen requested the state department investigate the claims, and if found true, “declare her a persona non grata and require her immediate departure from the United States”.