Like the larger-than-life hero of the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel of the roaring 20s, Iraqi Kurdistan's mysterious Minister of Finance, Sarkis Aghajan, has star power.

He is reputed to be one of the richest men in Iraq. And yet, like the fictional Jay Gatsby, no one knows anything about the sources of his wealth, his early career, or his family origin.

"We have no official biography of Mr. Aghajan as far as I know," a senior U.S. official in the Kurdish capital, Erbil, told Newsmax. "How did he make his money -- if indeed, he is personally wealthy? I haven't a clue."

Call him the Great Gatsby of Iraqi Kurdistan.

No one knows of any business experience or expertise that would explain Mr. Aghajan being given responsibility for Kurdistan's financial portfolio. What little is known of his family background suggests modest landholdings in northern Iraq and in Iran, but no vast family fortune that would explain his profligate spending.

And yet, according to confidants -- including a U.S. consultant who began his career in northern Iraq as an evangelical missionary in the early 1990s -- Mr. Aghajan has quietly disbursed tens of millions of dollars of his own money to help Iraq's embattled Christian population.

"Sarkis has been like a saint to Iraqi Christians," the consultant said. "He has housed 20,000 families who moved here from Baghdad at his own expense. He's built schools for them, and he did it all alone."

Set aside for the moment the exaggerations of a self-confessed recipient of Mr. Aghajan's favors. (Kurdish officials told Newsmax that 2,000 displaced Christian families have moved into the region, not 20,000).

The efforts by the consultant to sway reporters and other visitors, and by Mr. Aghajan himself through Ishtar TV -- a well-funded satellite channel that Mr. Aghajan established to recount his good deeds to the world -- amount to a very conscious attempt at myth-building.

Ishtar TV regularly broadcasts "celebrations" of Mr. Aghajan by "grateful" Iraqi Christians. Some sing his praises after moving into tiny prefab houses in reconstructed Christian villages in Kurdistan. Others parade about with huge photos of Mr. Aghajan at New Year's celebrations in Paris,