On Tuesday, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) announced it had imposed a major 1.17 billion ruble (over $17 million) fine on US tech giant Apple for violating Russia’s anti-monopoly laws.

The fine arose from a ruling the watchdog issued last July, which found the tech giant’s AppStore rules were in violation of local laws, because they forced developers to only use the payment system offered by Apple.

In a statement, the FAS explained, “App Store rules prohibited iOS app developers from informing in-app customers about the possibility to pay for purchases outside of the App Store, as well as from using alternative payment methods. The company demanded that developers remove links to their own Internet sites and change the functionality of the application to prevent registration forms from leading to external sites.”

The enormous size of the fine arose from the fact such fines are calculated based upon the company’s annual revenue within the country. Previously FAS had announced a policy of fining companies between 0.01 and 0.15% of their revenue for violating the country’s anti-monopoly laws.

The FAS had issued a similar ruling in July against tech-giant Google, however Google, unlike Apple, had moved to quickly adhere to the warning ruling, making adjustments to its Google Play payment rules, which brought the company’s product into alignment with Russian laws.

Analysts note that it is unclear if or how the fine will be imposed. Apple had announced it would withdraw its business operations from Russia following the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

However despite reports Apple would close its office in Moscow and relocate employees to other nations, observers report the Russian subsidiary appears to be operational, and there are no locatable records of any bankruptcies or liquidations.