Fermanagh businessman and one-time billionaire Sean Quinn has been linked to the Panama tax controversy.

Reports, based on a trove of confidential documents from Mossack Fonseca in the central American haven, have purported to expose the offshore arrangements of public officials, businesspeople and celebrities around the world.

The revelations in the so-called 'Panama Papers', which were coordinated by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, have raised suspicion that such offshore entities were set up to avoid taxes.

Earlier this week Iceland's prime minister became the first casualty of the affair, stepping down after a video was aired showing him breaking off a television interview over questions about his family's offshore dealings.

And it emerged yesterday from the Panama Papers that a British Virgin Islands company which contested Irish Bank Resolution Corporation’s attempt to seize a €70 million shopping mall in Kiev from businessman Seán Quinn’s family was set up by Mossack Fonseca.

According to a report in the Irish Times, Mossack Fonseca became concerned in 2012 about the possible consequences for it from a legal battle in the Ukraine involving the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) as it sought to get control of a shopping centre once owned by Seán Quinn’s family.

The legal firm’s concerns centred on a shopping mall in central Kiev which at the time was worth approximately €70 million and had a multi-million dollar annual rent roll.

A British Virgin Islands company established by Mossack Fonseca, Lyndhurst Development Trading SA, was claiming in the courts in Kiev that it had the rights to a $44 million debt linked to the mall, a debt which had formerly belonged to the Quinns.

Despite objections from lawyers representing the share receiver appointed on behalf of IBRC, the Kiev court entertained the Lyndhurst claim. At the time senior IBRC executive Peter Woodhouse said the court was acting as "a tool of legalised robbery."

The Kiev court clash was part of a battle that took place in courts in Dublin, Belfast, Kiev, Moscow and a number of other jurisdictions as IBRC fought to assert its control over an international property portfolio worth up to €500 million seized from the family of Seán Quinn.