KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 13 — Former Malaysia Airlines (MAS) chief executive and group managing director Petter Bellew must pay the company four months’ salary for resigning without giving sufficient notice.

Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani said today that Bellew’s three-year work contract dictated that he must tender a six-month notice before relinquishing his position, but Bellew only gave two months’ notice.

Johari said the same notice also applied for Khazanah Nasional Berhad which owns MAS, if it wished to let Bellew off.

"For your information YB, the notice for the MAS CEO’s contract is three years and in the contract, both parties can give six months’ notice.

"The CEO can give a six-month notice, or MAS can give a six-month notice.

"In the case of this MAS CEO (Bellew), he resigned and gave a notice short of four months. So we accepted it and he has to pay us four months (salary),” Johari told the Dewan Rakyat.

In his reply, Johari however refused to divulge details as to how much Bellew was paid in salary, and how much he was to pay Khazanah for exiting his contract without giving the mandatory six-month notice.

Johari was responding to PAS’ Pokok Sena MP Datuk Mahfuz Omar, who had asked the government to state if there was any term in Bellew’s contract which required him to pay should he exit his contract earlier.

Mahfuz also asked how much was paid by the previous CEO, Christoph Mueller, who also exited the company before his three-year contract ended.

Mahfuz also asked an additional question, as to why the government did not resort to hiring local experts instead of foreigners to helm the national flag carrier.

"You know YB, I too, since last time when I was a (Barisan Nasional) backbencher, I always defended that a Malaysian becomes the (MAS) CEO. However now, we have gotten a Malaysian as a CEO, so we have to learn from this issue,” Johari said.

Bellew tendered his resignation on October 8 to take up a position at Ireland’s Ryanair.

He was succeeded by Captain Izham Ismail.

Izham, currently the chief operating officer of MAS, will assume his new role on December 1 upon the departure of Peter Bellew, who is currently on administrative leave, national newswire Bernama reported.

Amid speculations, in a press conference on October 22, Bellew reportedly said that his sudden resignation was not due to political interference, with regards to MAS’ decision to purchase Boeing or Airbus planes.

Bellew also denied any rumours of interference from higher authorities, including parent company Khazanah and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Bernama reported.