David Mattan joined the Basel Institute on Governance and its International Centre for Asset Recovery in November 2024 as Senior Specialist, Asset Recovery, based in Moldova. He previously worked at the Basel Institute from 2020–2021 as Senior Asset Recovery Specialist based in Nairobi.

A graduate in law from Cambridge University in England, David worked for over 25 years in the field of asset recovery. His career includes being a senior police officer and prosecutor in Israel, and a specialist prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution Service in England, where he was the in-house prosecutor for a multi-institutional money laundering and asset recovery team.

Licensed (not practicing) in Israel, England and Wales, and New York State, David served as Key Expert for a three-year EU-funded project in Kosovo, drafting asset recovery legislation and mentoring and training specialist prosecutors. He has also delivered workshops on comparative asset recovery systems, anti-money laundering investigations and prosecutions, financial investigations and international cooperation in several jurisdictions, including North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Ghana, Romania, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.