U.S. businessman donates $12m to Israeli Olympic Committee

The Olympic Committee of Israel revealed Wednesday that the mystery man behind a recent $12 million donation is none other than 84-year-old liquor baron Sidney Frank, who recently sold his Grey Goose vodka label to Bacardi for a cool $2.3 billion.

Frank is donating $3 million a year to support Israel's preparations for the 2008 Olympics with the caveat that the money come on top of state funding - and not in its place.

Since selling Grey Goose, Frank has been busy giving away his newfound wealth, and he is having a great time doing it. "I just love giving money away," said Frank, who made his first fortune importing the herbal liqueur Jagermeister.

With Jagermeister established, Frank, then 77, set out to make some serious money in vodka. "A bottle of Absolut sells for $20 a bottle. Vodka is just water and alcohol, so if I sold a bottle for $30, the $10 difference is almost all profit," Frank told Forbes magazine.

Frank went to France to create the vodka, because he believed the French create the best in everything, stuck a $30 a liter price tag on the bottle and hawked it as the world's best vodka.

Things weren't always so flush for Frank, who grew up poor on a farm in Connecticut. After selling Grey Goose Frank gave Brown University, which he attended for a year and then left for lack of money, $100 million, the largest single gift in the school's 240-year history.