Shariah’s Black Box

[331] Of special note is the fact that the lawyers for the offering were King and Spaulding, LLP, one of the major law firm facilitators for SCF. See supra note 50.

[332] Caribou Coffee S-1, supra note 323, at 16-17.

[333] Id. at 35-36 & F-21.

[334] Letter from Thomas Jones, Senior Attorney, Securities and Exchange Commission, to George E. Mileusnic, Chief Financial Officer, Caribou Coffee Company, Inc. (Aug. 15, 2005) (commenting on Caribou Coffee Company, Inc.’s Form S-1 Registration Statement), available at SEC https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1332602/000000000005042186/filename1.txt (last visited Feb. 1, 2008).

[335] Caribou Coffee Company Inc., Amendment No. 1 to Form S-1 Registration Statement 37 (2005) [hereinafter Caribou Coffee First Amended Registration Statement]. Additional repetitive remarks were made on the inability to hedge.  Id. at  41.

[336] Letter from Thomas Jones, Senior Attorney, Securities and Exchange Commission, to George E. Mileusnic, Chief Financial Officer, Caribou Coffee Company, Inc. (Sep. 2, 2005) (commenting on Caribou Coffee Company, Inc.’s First Amended Registration Statement), available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1332602/000000000005046177/filename1.txt. The SEC also asked for an additional clarification on the difficulty to obtain financing due to the adherence to Shariah.

[337] See Caribou Coffee Prospectus, supra note 324. The failure to make the suggested changes and revisions requested by the SEC might have been due to any number of reasons: (1) the matter was resolved by telephone or letter after counsel for Caribou argued that there were sufficient disclosures of the matters raised by the SEC; or (2) the Caribou lawyers resubmitted the amended registration statement and the SEC examiners failed to notice the changes had not been made. The former is more likely.

[338] Caribou Coffee Company, Inc., Form 10-K Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended Dec. 31, 2006 (2007), available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1332602/000095013707004971/c13623e10vk.htm.

[339] The citation to legal rulings by Qaradawi opposing terrorist actions outside of Israel is only reassuring if one takes the view that murdering innocent Israelis is not an act of terror criminalized by U.S. law. See Dickey, supra note 325 (suggesting the Qaradawi affair was overblown insofar as he signed a fatwa against “innocent civilians”). Qaradawi considers no Jew in Israel an “innocent civilian.” ADL Report, supra note 326.

[340] See AAOIFI Sharia Board, https://www.aaoifi.com/sharia-board.html (last visited Feb. 1, 2008) (providing short biography of Usmani); see also Alex Alexiev, Usmani Dossier (on file with the author) [hereinafter Usmani Dossier] (providing information on Usmani based upon open sources).