Theymos has mentioned many times that the forum is not in need of money. So a fee for recovery wouldn't incentivise them to speed it up.

The payments for "evil" are presumably meant to be some sort of punitive fine.

Account recovery in it's current form is just low on the list of priorities for the only 2 people with the ability to perform them. It sucks but in general it does not impede anyone from using the forum so I can understand the prioritizing.