The Sunday Tribune has discovered that since 2004, a percentage of the profits from the insurer, totalling at least 116 million per year, has been paid into a company called Quinn Group Family Properties, which owns Quinn's Irish pub and hotel interests, creating a cash fund worth over 400m.

A spokesman for the Quinn Group confirmed that the money was for use in future corporate investments and that these would "not necessarily" be in the field of Irish hotels and pubs.

The cash could be used for Quinn's planned investments in power generation in Ireland or for the group's continuing expansion in Russia.

Over the past year, the group has begun to concentrate its investments on Russia and Eastern Europe and in September, bought its first shopping centre in Russia.

The 120,000sq m Avrora Centre in the city of Ufa is due to open later this year and was acquired by Quinn for around 105m.

Over the past two weeks, there have also been suggestions that Quinn may be interested in buying the Radisson SAS Slavyanskaya hotel in Moscow in a transaction worth up to 200m.

Quinn's total investments in Russia are now estimated to be more than 2bn.

Qunn is also planning to invest heavily in power generation in Ireland and last month lodged plans for a 450 megawatt gas-fired station in Co Louth, close to the North-South power interconnector. He is also said to be planning a similar project in the west of the country.