Sepp Blatter has rejected complaints made by football’s biggest sponsors over a bribery and corruption scandal, saying they were politically motivated and made at the behest of the US.

Blatter has been suspended from Fifa as part of the fallout from a US Department of Justice investigation into bribery, money-laundering and wire fraud at the sport’s governing body.

The 79-year-old had initially been set to remain in his post until next year, despite a string of arrests of top Fifa officials, until a group of major sponsors issued coordinated calls for him to go. Blatter was suspended a few days later.

“It is the American companies,” Blatter told the Financial Times in an interview in a reference to sponsors including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Visa, and Budweiser owner Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“The other companies haven’t said anything. So you are intelligent enough to make the connection with American companies and the American investigation. I do not need to underline that.”

Fifa, which Blatter ran for 17 years, is engulfed in the biggest scandal of its history, with 14 officials and sports marketing executives indicted by the US.

Blatter and the Uefa president, Michel Platini, are both serving 90-day suspensions imposed by Fifa’s ethics committee, which is looking into a £1.35m payment Blatter made to Platini in 2011 – a case that is also part of a separate Swiss criminal investigation.

Blatter has also spoke to the Russian news agency Tass, revealing that he had planned for Russia and the US to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups before the voting had taken place.

“The solution that has been agreed, not in writing, but it has been agreed, let’s go to the two superpowers in the vote for the World Cup: let’s go to Russia and let’s go to the United States,” he continued.

Blatter said that decision had not been taken officially by Fifa’s full executive committee but was rather an agreement taken “behind the scenes. It was diplomatically arranged.”

The plan fell apart, according to Blatter, when Platini changed his mind and backed Qatar for the 2022 World Cup under pressure from the then-French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Blatter said the problems at Fifa had all started with the vote to award the tournament to Qatar – a small desert country where daytime temperatures can top 40°C (104°F).

“If you see my face when I opened it [the envelope containing the winning bid], I was not the happiest man to say it is Qatar,” he said. “Definitely not.”

Blatter repeated his contention that the US multi-million-dollar investigation was a direct result of the US missing out on the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

“It took a political dimension,” Blatter said of the race to host the World Cup. “I am looking now to see what were the political reasons. The easiest thing would be to say [they are] bad losers.”