  We present Chandra and VLT observations of the X-Ray Flash XRF 040812. The
X-ray analysis reveals with high precision the position of a hard, fading
source. A careful analysis of our I-band VLT images taken starting 17 hours
after the burst led to the discovery of the optical afterglow superimposed to a
bright (I=21.5) host galaxy. The optical afterglow is seen decaying with an
index of 1.1. We do not detect any jet break and supernova rebrightening in the
optical light curve. The bright apparent luminosity of the host galaxy allows
us to get a rough estimate of the redshift, comparing with a set of GRB/XRF
host galaxies with known luminosity and redshift. Such comparison suggests a
redshift of XRF 040812 in the range 0.3<z<0.7. This is also consistent with the
lack of emission features in our spectrum. The low inferred redshift is in
agreement with the idea that XRFs are low-luminosity, closer events.
