I have both, CEF and GTU. I have no complaints about the integrity of their management. However, GTU has been quite a headache for me because of the Sprott people. As mentioned in this thread, Sprott has launched a hostile takeover for GTU. They have been at it since May 2015, and they have harassed us shareholders from the start. This is not what I had in mind when I bought the fund. Specifically, Sprott hired a firm that did some data mining (as opposed to gold mining) and obtained one of our unlisted telephone numbers. Then, they kept calling all times of the day and in the evening (yes, dinner time and after). Mind you, my shares are registered in the brokerage's street name, so that should have buffered me from the assaults. They also bombarded me with their junk mail, probably 5-10 kgs of it so far. Sprott has chiseled away, and there is a chance that they might get their hands on GTU very soon, January 15, 2016. If they do, I will bail out, as I don't do business with firms like that.
There is a lot you should know before buying a gold/silver ETF. Study the difference between closed-end funds like GTU/CEF and, say GLD or IAU. There is a peculiar artifact of the closed end funds like GTU and CEF which makes the NAV (net asset value) be below or above the price of the share. In a bull market, a share will cost more than its NAV. In a bear market (for gold/silver), the opposite is true. For example, CEF is currently trading at a significant discount to NAV (almost 10%). If you think that gold and silver will turn the corner and take off, then buying CEF now would be a good move from that standpoint. It is this discount that allowed Sprott to entice some of the shareholders into supporting the takeover.
If I had to do this again, I would stay away from all of the funds because people like Sprott can come along and turn a low maintenance investment into months of reading really convoluted legal documents with all kinds of disclaimers and countless paragraphs that inevitably advise you to seek help from your tax accountant. If you want to put money into gold, I would suggest buying coins from the Mint and storing them in a safe deposit box. That will cost a lot less than the management fees at a fund and you will sleep a lot better. The only reason I can see for buying an ETF would be if you are speculator and you have no long term interest in gold. Then, I would go with something that is very liquid. That's what ETFs like GLD are good for. BTW, I too am puzzled about the nature of their gold holdings. They never really explained the details in their prospectus. Anyway, the idea there is that you would be out of the fund long before the world finds out if they actually have the bars or just claims on some bars that are elsewhere.