Japan Tobacco said Wednesday it was being probed by the European Union after a report it broke sanctions by shipping cigarettes to a firm linked to the Syrian regime, but denied any wrongdoing.

Japan Tobacco (JT), which is 50 percent owned by the government, insisted its Geneva-based subsidiary JT International (JTI) had done nothing wrong amid claims it supplied a firm with family links to President Bashar al-Assad. The Wall Street Journal, citing corporate documents, said a shipment by JTI in May 2011 went to a firm that was at least partly owned by the Makhlouf family at the time. The EU and the US say the Makhloufs, who are first cousins of Assad, are partially bankrolling the president's crackdown on the uprising in Syria. The EU placed financial sanctions on Rami Makhlouf, the scion of the family, as well as on his brothers Iyad and Ihab, on May 23, 2011, for their alleged role in helping to finance Assad's actions. Just four days later, JTI used a distributor based in Cyprus to deliver 450,000 cartons of cigarettes to Syria Duty Free Shops, a company JTI acknowledges was then at least partly owned by Makhlouf, the paper said. JTI also delivered 4.2 million cartons of Winston cigarettes to Syria's state-owned tobacco company in May 2011, the report said. The paper cited dissidents as claiming that cigarettes are used as a form of payment to irregular military forces by the regime.