Can bounties be refunded by mods now?

Question

I have no particular objection to the withdrawal of a bounty, specially if offered by a mod and even more specially by one who has lost about 30k rep in good causes, but I do rather object to incorrect guidance. Given bounty emboldens both of:

non-refundable

and

All bounties are paid for up front and non-refundable under any circumstances

can we at least have a footnote on that page that mentions there may be very exceptional circumstances in which bounties are refunded?

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Example:

and then...

yet bounty award does not show for any Answer to that Q. At present it does not even show any answer though I think there was an attempt at one (that I did not accept as it added nothing of value, IMO). But even if there was an A at one time I am convinced it was not from the bounty awarder (from whose profile I took the image above) and You cannot award a bounty to your own answer anyway.

I have a feint recollection (though it might just be imagination) of a case on SO of something like a bounty being put on a duplicate question that was then merged or deleted and a mod mentioned that they had refunded the bounty accordingly. As mentioned, I have no objection to mods being able so to do. (Or it might have been a bounty, not from OP, put on a Q that the OP had requested be deleted for breach of confidentiality/risking sanctions from employer or such like.)

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The current choice of Title is not mine. Although quite well hidden, one of the bullet points here from March 4, 2012 is:

They can (at their discretion) refund and cancel a bounty.

Answer 1

According to How does the bounty system work? (Meta.SE), diamond moderators have the power:

What happens if a bounty question is closed, or deleted?

Why can't I vote to close or migrate a bounty question?

Bounty questions cannot be closed directly.

However, diamond moderators can refund bounties, which would then allow it to be closed, migrated, or deleted like any other question. (source)

It is correct that the help centre does not note this, but that may be due to the fact that bounty refunding should only happen under very specific circumstances.

By the way, there is a second way to get one’s bounty award back, as noted further down in the Meta.SE faq post:

Do I get the reputation back when question I placed bounty that was already awarded is being deleted or migrated?

Yes. The change is not immediate like other reputation changes but the reputation is given back (Source – marked status-bydesign is official enough). If the question is undeleted or migration is rejected, the reputation is reduced again.

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The case you noted has an additional flavour to it, since the user offering the bounty (and having gotten it back) is a diamond moderator themself. In the interest of transparency, I feel it would be a good idea for whichever diamond moderator was responsible for the refund to drop a comment on why the bounty was refunded.

In my opinion such a note should always be added unless it is clear why, e.g. if an out-of-scope question is closed shortly after the bounty refund.