His paternal grandfather Nikolai Andrianovich Venediktov served in NKVD and was awarded an Order of the Red Star for taking part in courts-martial and creating barrier troops during the Great Patriotic War.

Venediktov's mother, Eleonora Abramovna Dykhovichnaya, was a doctor of Jewish origin; she came from a generation of prominent engineers.

During his tenure he interviewed presidents Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Francois Hollande, Kersti Kaljulaid and Ilham Aliyev; German chancellor Angela Merkel; US Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice; Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan and many other prominent political leaders.

The meeting was immediately stopped, and Dudaev's guards escorted him outside, made him face the wall and staged a mock execution.

It was shut down within two weeks, supposedly for its harsh critics of the Judiciary of Russia, although the producer, Alexander Rodnyansky, denied it had anything to do with politics.

[12] Until 2015, 33.02% of all Echo of Moscow's shares were owned by the American company EM-Holding, with 1/3 of them belonging to Venediktov and Yuri Fedutinov (ex-chief executive at the station) and others — to the Israeli media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky and his partners.

But in 2015, the Russian State Duma passed a new law forbidding foreign citizens from owning more than 20% of all shares in a national media company.

[16] Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation accused Venediktov of providing PR support to the mayor of Moscow in return for the money received for publishing an add-on to the Diletant magazine.