The man who led Russia’s winning bid for the 2018 World Cup has denied deliberately obstructing Fifa’s investigation into alleged corruption during the bid process after it emerged evidence had been destroyed.

Both Russia and Qatar were cleared by a Fifa judge on Thursday before the process descended into chaos when Fifa’s own investigator Michael Garcia complained that a summary of his report misrepresented his conclusions.

Among the report’s findings was an observation that the Russia bid had destroyed documents and emails were now unavailable – hampering investigation of allegations around it.

The Fifa summary said: “The Russia bid committee made only a limited number of documents available for review, which was explained by the fact that the computers used at the time by the Russia bid committee had been leased and returned to their owner after the bidding process.

“The owner has confirmed the computers were destroyed in the meantime. The bid committee also attempted to obtain access to the Gmail accounts used during the bidding process from Google USA. However, the Russia bid committee confirmed Google USA had not responded to the request.”

However, Alexei Sorokin, who now runs Russia’s local organising committee, said that “everything we could supply to the investigation, we did”, and added that the bid had lost track of the rented computers after the process ended.

“We are sure that our bid was transparent. We did not commit any violations. We were always sure that they would not find anything unlawful,” he said. “We handed over everything that we could. You have to understand that four years had passed and some information is simply forgotten.”

Vyacheslav Koloskov, president emeritus of the Russian Football Union, said in an interview with the Russian website Sovsport.ru that Russia’s bid was not guilty of corruption, arguing that members of the bidding committee had only given out traditional Russian coloured shawls and “inexpensive watches” as presents to promote their candidacy, all of them costing under $300 as per Russian regulations.

“I’m convinced that the strength of our bid was that we met with everyone, with all members of fifa, plus the president personally helped promote us. This huge effort was the basis of our bid,” Koloskov said.

Speaking before Garcia’s protest against the report summary, Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko said: “Our bidding campaign was absolutely honest. We didn’t play any games behind the scenes. I’m glad that this matter has finally been put to rest.”

The report considered that the evidence available was “not sufficient to support any findings of misconduct by the Russia 2018 bid team or any individual involved with it suited to compromise the integrity of the … process.”

Asked about Russia’s stance, England’s FA chairman Greg Dyke said: “Those who cooperated the most [with the investigation] seemed to be the ones that gave them the information by which they were then criticised, like the FA. Others, who didn’t cooperate, didn’t get criticised at all. Well, there’s a surprise.”

The report also drew attention to the Spain/Portugal bid for 2018, noting that “one specific bid team” had failed to cooperate, being “particularly uncooperative in responding to the investigatory chamber’s requests”.