Sawamura, Takeshi

Sawamura Takeshi is a producer and former president of Gainax. He was born in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Sawamura was a producer for Return of Ultraman and Eight-Headed Giant Serpent's Counterattack - two live-action parody movies made by DAICON FILM, a group of young animators and filmmakers that was established in 1981 and officially became studio Gainax in 1984. After Okada Toshio, the first president and co-founder of Gainax, left the studio in 1992, Sawamura became the second Gainax president. However, in the wake of Neon Genesis Evangelion's success, Gainax was audited by the National Tax Agency at the urging of the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau on suspicion of committing tax evasion on the massive profits accruing from various Evangelion properties. It was later revealed that Gainax had concealed 1.56 billion yen worth of income (thereby failing to pay 560 million yen due in corporate taxes) which it had earned between the release of Evangelion and July 1997 by paying closely related companies various large fees, ostensibly to pay for animation expenses, but then immediately withdrawing 90% of the sums from the other company's accounts as cash and storing it in safe deposit boxes (leaving 10% as a reward for the other company's assistance). Sawamura Takeshi and tax accountant Iwasaki Yoshikatsu were arrested on July 13, 1999 and later jailed for accounting fraud. However, Takeda Yasuhiro defended Sawamura's actions as being a reaction to Gainax's perpetually precarious finances and the shaky accounting procedures internally. Sawamura officially left Gainax in the year 2000. However, he later collaborated with the studio by assisting with historical research for Dantalian no Shoka anime series.