Jeff Bezos Surpasses Billionaire Gautam Adani As World’s Third-Richest Person After Short Seller’s Scathing Report

As shares of publicly traded companies tumbled on Wednesday, Adani’s fortune fell by $6.5 billion to about $119.1 billion by 2:30 p.m. ET—falling below Bezos’ net worth of $119.2 billion, according to Forbes estimates.

Adani, once the world’s second-richest person, remains the richest person in Asia (he’s trailed by Reliance Industries chair Mukesh Ambani, who’s worth an estimated $85 billion), but Wednesday marks the first time since September the 60-year-old is not among the world’s three richest people.

The stock rout comes after activist investment firm Hindenburg Research disclosed a short position against the conglomerate (which includes interests in energy, real estate and India’s largest port) and alleged Adani Group companies “engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.”

As part of its claims, Hindenburg said it found Adani’s family members have managed a “vast labyrinth” of offshore shell companies that moved billions of dollar into publicly traded Adani companies, often without required disclosures, in an effort to appear financially healthy, launder money and manipulate the firms’ stock prices.

In a statement shared to Forbes, Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh dismissed Hindenburg’s report, saying it is “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts.”