Kakamega county assembly staff fled the premises after EACC officials arrived, thinking they would be arrested in an operation that has been termed intimidation.

Speaker Morris Buluma and clerk Patrick Kamwesser were absent but Minority leader Titus Kwomah confirmed the detectives visited the assembly last Wednesday.

"It is true that people ran away but I decided to rush there and find out what the officers were up to," Kwomah said on Monday.

"We later discovered the officers had not been detailed to do so, but were on other missions and opted to come and intimidate the assembly leadership."

Kwomah said the officers did not have a detailed letter that he noted must be served for an insitution to be investigated.

He said the assembly leadership identified the correct team of detectives and met them in Eldortet the following day.

"They demanded to look at the tender documents for the proposed new assembly chambers, which we provided, and they cleared the process as having been above board," he said.

The minority leader said a section of MCAs wrote to the commission over a Sh500 million tender questioning its process but did not benefit.

He said some county reps collected money from contractors promising to ensure they were awarded the tender.

Kwomah said the assembly service board stopped the disbursement of Sh60,000 to five MCAs every month, for the payment of ward officers and staff members' salaries.

"We did an audit as an assembly and established that the five do not have physical offices yet they continue to receive the funding. We stopped the payments because this amounts to fraud," he said.

Allegations of corruption in the management of the assembly's affairs have featured prominently in the recent past.