Greenland’s premier condemns alleged cash-for-signatures scheme as “outrageous”
Greenland’s premier has denounced reports that a foreign man—possibly American—offered two residents $200,000 each to sign a petition supporting U.S. annexation of the island, calling the approach “not just deeply concerning, but outright outrageous.”
The allegations, first reported by Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq, prompted Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen to declare on Facebook that “Greenland is not for sale.” Police in the capital, Nuuk, confirmed they are investigating the incident after receiving a formal complaint.
“A foreign individual offering money for signatures to incorporate Greenland into another country—that is how you treat neither a people nor a nation,” Nielsen wrote, emphasizing the island’s democratic right to self-determination. “Our future will not be negotiated in a taxi, nor bought with cash.”
The reported sum of $200,000 (over 1.8 million Norwegian kroner) was allegedly offered to two Greenlandic citizens in separate encounters. Police spokesman Poul Kreutzmann told Sermitsiaq the case “cannot be ruled out as linked to the current political situation,” an apparent reference to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated statements about acquiring Greenland.
Peter Viggo Jakobsen, a lecturer at Denmark’s Defence Academy, dismissed the alleged scheme as “so amateurish it could almost be a setup to discredit the U.S.” He suggested the tactic—if genuine—would backfire, calling it “shooting yourself in the foot” and speculating it might even be a prank or provocation. Jakobsen cited a 2019 incident where a German comedian hoisted an American flag in Nuuk as a stunt.
The U.S. Embassy in Greenland told Sermitsiaq the individual in question, “who may or may not be a U.S. citizen, is not a representative of the U.S. government.” Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, has previously rejected American overtures, including a 2019 proposal by the Trump administration to purchase the island.