The controversial Fifa executive committee member Jack Warner today broke his silence on the contested 2018 World Cup vote when he said voting for England would have been "the ultimate insult" to Fifa in the wake of British media allegations of corruption.

England 2018 insiders claim Warner, pivotal to their chances of success and wooed by David Beckham and successive prime ministers, promised the three votes under his control to England before voting for Russia. But the Concacaf president said the revelations in the Sunday Times and Panorama were the reason England polled only two of the 22 votes available and were knocked out in the first round.

Three days before the vote, Panorama accused three Fifa executive committee members of bribery and alleged Warner tried to supply ticket touts at the 2010 World Cup. He had previously been admonished by Fifa's ethics committee over ticket deals for the 2006 tournament and has faced a host of other allegations of impropriety.

"Suffice it to say the Fifa exco as a body could not have voted for England having been insulted by their media in the worst possible way at the same time. To do so would have been the ultimate insult [to Fifa]," said Warner.

It is understood the Fifa president Sepp Blatter raised the issue of the "evil" media coverage of Fifa just hours before the vote and England's rivals, including the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and influential Spanish ex-co member Angel María Villar Llona, played heavily on it.

Some on England's bid team believe the revelatory media exposes, which they tried desperately to disassociate themselves from, were a factor but others believe that the issue became an convenient excuse for Fifa members to switch their votes for other reasons.

Japan's Junji Ogura said the investigations, which led to the suspension of six senior Fifa officials including two executive committee members in the case of the Sunday Times, had an impact.

"What I can say is that the reports definitely had an impact on the England bid. There's no mistake about that," said Ogura, heavily courted by England but believed to have backed Russia.

Ogura said his colleagues were angry at the Sunday Times sting on Nigeria's Amos Adamu and Tahiti's Reynald Temarii. "The African members of the executive committee were furious over the Sunday Times report," Ogura said.

"They even suggested suing the paper at the executive committee meeting. The people being accused were from Africa and Oceania, not Europe or Asia, and some felt racism was behind it."

The head of Australia's failed 2022 bid Frank Lowy said "playing straight" may have cost them the World Cup, adding that Fifa members lied to them about their voting intentions.

"I wanted to give credit to Australia and not to get caught in some kind of shonky business, and I can assure you now that we didn't do anything that was improper in this whole period," said Lowy.

"Did that cost us the bid? Maybe. I don't know, I'm not sure. But we are straight and we wanted to play it straight."

Jerome Valcke, the Fifa secretary general who oversaw the voting process, again defended the secret ballot system.

"If we say yes, yes it does not work, we would recognise something went wrong," said Valcke, speaking in Abu Dhabi ahead of tomorrow's opening match of the Club World Cup. "I'm sorry to say we have organised a voting system which was very transparent.

"If the question is it's not transparent because you don't know who voted for whom, you will never know for whom I voted for between Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal three years ago when the election took place. I will not tell because that is my freedom to decide for whom I voted without having to say publicly my choice."

Valcke, under pressure as the man who recommended that both World Cups be decided at once for commercial reasons, has already indicated that Fifa will not bow to pressure to overhaul the voting system or expand the electorate.

He said Fifa had until 2018 to decide if it "should or [should] not change" the way host countries are decided. But he said last week's vote was "perfectly organised, perfectly transparent and perfectly under control."