Stuart Yikona has been a Program Manager for the Seoul Center for Finance and Innovation of the World Bank based in Songdo, South Korea since September 2021. Prior to joining the World Bank in June 2005, he worked as a Consulting Counsel with the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund from 2001-2005. He was a Senior Financial Sector Specialist in the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation unit in East Asia and Pacific based in Washington DC. He joined the East Asia and Pacific region in 2016, having spent 11 years in Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation’s Financial Stability and Integrity Global unit. Stuart specializes in financial integrity, financial inclusion, risk-based supervision, anti-corruption, and governance. Stuart holds a Doctor in Juridical Science from the University of Virginia Law School focusing on Insider Abuse in Banking Institutions. He has advised client countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the Caribbean and Europe & Central Asia regions on issues related to combating financial crimes such as corruption, the laundering of proceeds of crimes; conducting national risk assessments; developing risk based frameworks and their implementation; delivering capacity building programs to strengthen client countries capacity to combat financial crimes covering the financial sector and law enforcement agencies; and pursuing research on impact of ill-gotten money on the economy.
He co-authored a report on “Ill-gotten Money and the Economy, Experiences from Malawi and Namibia” (2011). He is also co-author of a report on “Pirate Trails: Tracking the Financial Flows from Piracy off the Horn of Africa” (2013).