Every businessman want whales to come to their platform but they cannot make that if they don't have solid community so building up first the community and see how fair they are can attract huge number of players including those whales which can spend a lot of money just to play the game. For sure whales will not play on casino if they don't see any huge activities coming happening on the platform. Also I believe they are truly aware about those KYC so for sure they are selective on reputation before going in so I believe this is not main issue to them.
This depends, there are ton of ways to lure whales in. One certainly is to give them tokens that pay dividends. But i am pretty sure that they also get private deals where casinos are giving them huge (even unofficial) cashbacks just to play there. That's what i would do anyway.
I personally trust casinos more if whales are playing there. Because if they trust it, changes are that i can too. So i think it's other way around too; whales draw regular people in.