When someone describes the US as a self-appointed “global policeman”, they don’t usually mean it as a compliment. Ordinarily, it serves as shorthand for the arrogance of American power, invading countries and imposing regime change, charging about the world heedless of everyone’s needs but its own.

But every now and then the phrase seems apt in a rather more positive way. On Tuesday it emerged that the US Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the international tax avoidance schemes revealed earlier this month by the Panama Papers. The US attorney for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, has written to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the organisation which oversaw the exposé of the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca seeking further information. Since the leak contained 11.5m files, there’s certainly no shortage of that.

The long reach of US anti-corruption laws are a global asset not to be dismissed lightly

The news of Bharara’s investigation prompts a familiar feeling. It was the same sensation that came on a May morning in 2015, when thanks to the FBI, a dawn raid on a Zurich hotel saw seven officials of football’s world governing body Fifa arrested on corruption charges. Accusations about the empire built by Sepp Blatter had swirled for years. But even though Fifa has its headquarters in Europe, and even though the US has only a – shall we say – developing role in what it calls soccer, it was an investigation by America’s Feds that finally brought serious action.

You could say the same about the $1.9bn fine the US authorities levied on HSBC in 2012 for money laundering, after an investigation by the US senate found the bank had served as a conduit “for drug kingpins and rogue nations”. That case involved Mexican drug cartels, Saudi banks linked to terrorist finance, Russian criminals and sanctions-busters trading with Iran – all centred on a bank whose head office is in London. Yet it was Washington that acted.

It is quite a pattern. Campaigners against corruption – and against the arms trade – remember their disappointment in 2006 when the UK Serious Fraud Office dropped its long-running investigation into BAE Systems, formerly British Aerospace, and its multibillion pound al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia. The British government claimed at the time it was halting the inquiry because it feared damaging relations with the Saudi kingdom which could, in turn, threaten UK national security.

No such reservations in the US, where they kept on probing, eventually fining the company more than $400m after BAE Systems pleaded guilty to having made false statements and failure to follow anti-bribery rules.

In each case, it was the long arm of American law that brought justice. People are right to complain of the long history of US aggression and intervention in the lives of other sovereign nations. But the long reach of US anti-corruption laws, its willingness to act and its ability to do so, are a global asset not to be dismissed lightly.

When it comes to taking on corruption, often it seems the US is the only nation strong enough to do the job. If it’s willing to be the global policeman against tax evaders, drug lords and the corrupt, then I for one am grateful.