North Korean Companies: WH Loan Trail
Tyler Zacharia helped Schulze Global build a North Korea team while he and Katie Zacharia lived and worked in Beijing.
The husband of White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia helped build a North Korea operation at an investment firm that made loans while sanctions were in force.
The connection runs through both Zacharias’ time in China. Katie Zacharia worked in Beijing as an associate on Zhong Lun Law Firm’s International Practice Team from August 2011 through June 2013, according to her professional profile. At her first White House briefing, asked which bar she passed, Zacharia answered, “When I moved to China.”
Tyler Zacharia spent eight years as Beijing vice president at Schulze Global Investments, later SGI Frontier Capital. His current employer biography says he built teams in Ethiopia, Brazil, Mongolia, and North Korea.
Forbes reported in 2011 that Schulze Global made three loans in 2008, each worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, to North Korean mining companies for equipment and expansion. Each loan was repaid, Forbes reported.
That summer, founder Gabriel Schulze lent another $1 million to finance a North Korean conglomerate’s purchases of corn for its workers. Schulze said the early loans “opened the doors” to his effort to bring Coca-Cola to Pyongyang.
U.S. sanctions were in force under Executive Order 13466 in 2008 and Executive Order 13570 in 2011.
Forbes reported Schulze consulted U.S. sanctions lawyers and filed notices with Treasury before the loans. The published record places Zacharia at the firm and in its North Korea expansion, but does not assign him to a specific loan. No public enforcement action against Schulze Global or Zacharia has been identified.