A recruiter's long-term compensation and viability is based upon repeat business. And they are working for the potential employer, not you. That is also the basis of the majority of their reputation with respect to getting contracts.
So... They are interested in providing candidates that are, in as many parameter's as possible, within the employer's range -- and towards the favorable end.
As to the ur-child-level idea that "good CEO's" will "clamp down" or whatever the term was on this practice...
"Good CEO's" generally have NO interest in tackling the details of HR policy except when they are quite visibly causing problems and/or a big, bold initiative sweeps them into its fold ("Mind the Gap", or whatever the flavor du jour is).
HR is a... well, in many ways and all the more bureaucratically so in larger firms, a nasty, detailed business. Endless quantities of compliance. "Fair" as a tool of constraint as often if not more so than enablement. Secrecy and emotions and politics, all needing to be whitewashed.
The kind of details CEO's don't want to micromanage, and that the smarter ones know to stay away from -- or at least, at arm's length.
There are individual exceptions -- some brave. But looking across the landscape of business, I don't think is there is any great movement to buck HR and attendant policy. It is a bureaucracy now well rooted in and growing from a depth and maze of regulation and law. Not all of which is bad -- worker safety and y and z and... have been much needed.
But, don't expect your average CEO to "go there".