Beleaguered Chinese telecom giant Huawei on Tuesday denied accusations reported in Wall Street Journal that it stole techlogy from a Portuguese inventor, accusing him of "taking vant of current geopolitical situation".  US Department of Justice is looking into claim, potentially ding to existing criminal cases against Huawei, WSJ reported last week. Huawei considered world leer in superfast 5G equipment and world's number two smartphone producer was in May swept into a deepening tre war between Beijing and Washington, which has seen punitive tariffs slapped on hundreds of billions of dollars of two-way tre. latest controversy involves Portuguese inventor Rui Pedro Oliveira who claims Huawei met him and n essentially ripped off one of his designs in order to produce Huawei EnVizion 360 paramic camera.

Huawei issues a statement

"se allegations are false," Huawei said in a statement in which it "categorically rejects Mr. Oliveira's claims of patent infringement". "For past several months, US government has been leveraging its political and diplomatic influence to lobby or governments to ban Huawei equipment. 

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Furrmore, it has been using every tool at its disposal - including both judicial and ministrative powers, as well as a host of or unscrupulous means - to disrupt rmal business operations of Huawei and its partners," Chinese company said. It said "Oliveira proceeded to feed a false narrative to media in an attempt to tarnish Huawei's reputation. He me furr efforts to exert pressure on Huawei through senior government officials, trying to make company cede to his demands and hand over large sums of money."   United States is pressing allies, with mixed success, to reject Chinese 5G techlogy, especially from giant mobile phone company Huawei. Washington fears that Huawei will provide Beijing with a way to spy on communications from countries that use its products and services.

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Huawei mitted meeting with Oliveira in 2014 but insisted that its EnVizion 360 camera was "independently designed and developed by Huawei's employees having access to Mr. Oliveira's information". Last month US Commerce Department effectively suspended for a second time tough rules stopping sale of components and services to Chinese telecoms titan and a prohibition on buying equipment from it. However, it also said it would d 46 more companies to its list of Huawei subsidiaries and affiliates that would be covered by ban if it is implemented in full -- taking total on list to more than 100. In December Cana arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US warrant.