Malaysian Airlines (MAS), which has been drawing heavy flak of late, was today hit by another shell.

Fired by Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) vice-president Azmin Ali, the latest accusation is that the company has a former Israeli intelligence officer on its payroll.

Azmin has given Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, his deputy Najib Abdul Razak and Transport Minister Chan Kong Choy 24 hours to explain the matter.

Failing which, he said, action will be taken but did not elaborate on this.

According to Azmin, the ex-Israeli agent had been hired as a consultant by the financially-troubled carrier for its IT department.

He made the allegation when presenting a working paper for the PKR supreme council at the party's national congress in Kuala Lumpur today.

The opposition leader also claimed that he had documents (pic left) to back his allegation.

Astronomical salaries

Meanwhile, Azmin also revealed that MAS might not be soaring in terms of profits but its salary scheme had definitely reached dizzy heights.

He claimed the company had hired two more foreign consultants and two architects when computer giant IBM was already outsourced by the company.

Speaking to reporters later, he said MAS hired an Australian consultant on Sept 5 for its IT department, who was paid RM4,400 per day while another IT consultant from Singapore was
pocketing RM825,000 per annum.

Apart from this, he added that the airlines had also employed an architectural manager and enterprise architect who were being paid RM180,000 and RM204,000 per year respectively.

MAS was also said to have paid RM298,202 to a recruitment agency to head-hunt for the Singaporean and two architects.

In total, Azmin claimed, MAS had spent RM8.730 million in outsourcing cost since 2004 to Sept 2005.

Over the week, the airlines was in the limelight over the purchase of three paintings worth more than RM1 million.