Cannot create new projects w/o templates

Gitlab version: 11.4.3 (adea99b)
We are facing an issue with project creation on our Gitlab instance.
Using the UI, creating projects from templates works fine however creating projects from scratch fails w/o any error warning.
When trying to create a project using the API, the WS returns null
curl --header “PRIVATE-TOKEN:token” -X POST “http://gitlab.xxxx.com/api/v4/projects?name=itprofil_stream&namespace_id=10
null
We have tried pouring over the logs but could not find anything. The previous call is logged with an HTTP 201 return code in api_json.log

All insights on this issue will be welcome.

Did you ever workout how to fix this @jalperov
This seems to be the same issue we are experiencing too