So, is Big Dollar still part of Grand Prive? -
It seems to be in my opinion, but I've been wrong before (and will be again I expect)
I think a bigger question is why they will not say, not whether they are or not. There should be no reason for this kind of concealment, yet Grand Prive/Big Dollar, go for the "no comment" responce when asked the direct question, and try to dance around the issue when the question is indirect.
This is as bad (or almost as bad perhaps) as lying to the player, and surely eCogra requires honesty from the seal holders, and that a direct question of relevance should receive a clear and honest answer.
As for the bonus terms changing at Grand Prive, and mirrored at Big Dollar, well this is strongly in favour of Big Dollar being a DIRECT part of Grand Prive.
There is an equivalent relationship from which I draw this, and this is Prime Casino and the Palace Group. With Prime, all transactions bear the name of "Palace Group" on my Neteller statement, Palace Group run all the Prime casino promotions through their systems, and do all the support for them.
HOWEVER - unlike Big Dollar, the terms and conditions at Prime, particularly for bonuses, does not, in any way, mirror those universally applied across the Palace group as a whole, Prime has it's own terms, and it appears Palace Group just implement them on instruction from the owners of Prime.
Big Dollar, like Villa Fortuna, probably ARE directly owned by Grand Prive, but for some reason Grand Prive have to give the impression there is no connection, even though some basic comparisons between the casinos make it pretty obvious a connection between them runs very deep.
With Villa Fortuna, Grand Prive inadvertantly let slip the connection when they launched an attempt to kill forum discussion of Villa Fortuna. They were pressing forum owners to remove all references to Villa Fortuna, but in doing so, they had to reveal some reason why, and that they were indeed authorised to ask this, and this revealed it was Grand Prive doing the asking, as Villa Fortuna was an experimental casino being target marketed (or spammed if you like) specifically for European players. Presumably, they didn't want US players becoming aware of this casino, and trying to join up. It is quite possible that their latest moves were planned out WELL in advance, and ready to go should the situation call for it - and this happened in November.