Flamboyant businessman Leonardo Farkas [photo] sent a check for 10 000 dollars to each of the 33 Chilean miners rescued from the San José mine.

Moreover, the Israeli Government invited the miners and their families to spend a luxury Christmas holiday in the Holy Land as a way of thanking them for the faith they incarnate.

Leonardo Farkas, who came close to running in the 2009 Chilean presidential elections, might take the step in 2013. A Jew of Hungarian origin, he married the Concord Hotels heiress Betina Friedman Parker. Together, they built up his father’s small mining company to become the current iron magnates of Chile. His jet-setter life style and rubbing elbows with the stars of show business - in stark contrast with the reserved and curt demeanor of his Chilean peers - have made him the talk of the town. He counts on the support of the Zionist movement that wants to promote him as the "Obama" of Latin America.