The driver of Igor Janushev, the government's general secretary, will spend the next 30 days in custody. Prosecutors say he asked a Skopje man for 1,500 euros to "arrange" him a job as a firefighter with the City of Skopje. Police caught him taking 500 euros of the agreed sum - in marked bills.

The number is what tells the story. A public sector job for 1,500 euros. That was the price of the promised door to "officials in the City of Skopje", according to the investigation order issued by the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime and Corruption. The suspect works in the government's Office for General and Joint Affairs - a man whose job description is to drive, not to open doors inside the city administration.

The timeline in the prosecution statement runs six weeks: from 24 July to 4 September this year the suspect worked on the citizen. The citizen reported him. The anti-corruption unit at the Public Security Bureau, coordinating with the prosecutor, marked the money and waited. On 4 September the handover was documented and the driver was arrested.

The pre-trial judge did not deliberate for long. Flight risk, possible influence on witnesses, risk of repetition - three reasons, 30 days in custody. In its statement the prosecution praises the citizen's report and encourages others to do the same.

According to the interior ministry, the suspect is D.C., a 49-year-old from Skopje employed at the Office for General and Joint Affairs. The money was found during a search of the official vehicle he was using, and police also seized his mobile phone. The government's response tied him to the General Secretariat - the fact that he was the general secretary's personal driver comes from Janushev's own statement.

Janushev posted on Facebook in the afternoon and distanced himself from everything. "I completely distance myself from the conduct of the detained person. His conduct has nothing to do with me, with my office, with my work or with any decision or action of mine", he wrote, adding that the driver had previously driven other officials and had been with him for only about six months.

The opposition is not buying it that easily. SDSM wants the investigation to establish whether the driver acted alone or whether someone else stood behind the promised job. The question is not trivial: a man who drives and holds no authority whatsoever can hardly promise influence over a staffing decision in the City of Skopje, unless he is counting on someone else to cover him. That is exactly what prosecutors are investigating - how far his "presumed influence" was supposed to reach.

This is not this government's first case. Earlier, Angel Samarakov from the prime minister's security detail was arrested over a 50,000-euro bribe for confidential information. Before him, the agriculture directors Ilija Stoilev and Vase Anakiev - Stoilev caught with 400 of a promised 50,000 euros for approving an IPARD project, and Anakiev found with 50,000 as the first instalment of a requested 100,000 for the unobstructed import of agricultural goods.

The government reads all this as proof the system works: "This draws a clear line between those who want to abuse and everyone else fighting against them." You can read it that way. You can also read it differently - that over two years the bribery has nested from the agriculture directorates, through the prime minister's security detail, down to the drivers of the general secretariat. The line gets drawn every time someone is caught. The question is why there is so often something to draw a line under.

This particular case started in the simplest way possible - one citizen refused to pay and went to the police. That is the part worth holding on to. The prosecution encourages others to do the same, which is fair enough, but it implies something else too: in this story, not a single institution took the first step.