1. They have all the freedom of doing any how with your rewards
2. They can change certain rules that aren't reasonable, just because it's their project and they are handling the distribution they are free to do some bad things
3. Bounty Managers are very very important, you can get them nailed for not facing the team to force them to do distribution but you can't fight the team yourself
I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees things this way, or am I?
What' you've said are all possibilities that their team will do but some of the points you presented has been done by even independent bounty managers, the developers are the ones giving bounty managers orders on how the project will proceed, even independent bounty manager cannot break their agreement, it lies on the trustworthiness of the project.